Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

jhkp One of the more interesting features of this film is that much of it takes place outdoors, yet a lot of it is shot on the sound stages at MGM and on the back lot (the church used for the funeral sequence is the one at the end of the "Andy Hardy" street, for ex.) For the most part, this gives the film a kind of claustrophobic feeling which actually works in its favor. The rain, the lightning, even the trees, the sky, the bridge on the forest road, the cabin in the woods all seem fake - special effects, miniatures, cycloramas, sets - perfectly lit and shot to suggest the real thing, while also suggesting theatre. Somehow a perfect setting for this drama with its theatrical intensity.Cukor was an odd choice for this material, except that he had directed Hepburn several times before and was probably her favorite director. He brings his usual sincerity to the work, focusing less on polemics as on the emotional toll Forester's life and death has taken on his family and "fans." Again, the artificial sets and lighting, the shooting on back lot and sound stage, work extremely well to create the sense of an isolated, small community who worked and lived in Forrest's shadow, either worshipful, fearful, or skeptical of his intense presence.What's very interesting is the way the man was perceived from afar, vs. close to home. I have often thought of this film when I've seen real-life heroes and wondered exactly what they're really like, what their home life is like, and how they really interact not with the masses but with the actual people around them. While most are not like Forrest, it's still a good idea to keep the lessons this film brings up in mind.Typically, Cukor does not use the usual MGM stock company for his supporting cast but seems to try to find fresh faces. Audrey Christie appears here in her first film, for example, and Percy Kilbride has one of his first important roles. Richard Whorf and Frank Craven are other faces whose main experience was on the stage at that time.An absorbing film with a particularly great performance from Tracy and another amazing one from the young Darryl Hickman.

skiddoo When I was in high school a survey came out that the Baby Boomers didn't have heroes and that was considered a bad thing. I still think it is a very, very GOOD thing! Beware of the people you put up on a pedestal. Beware of people who care more about power than the truth. It is, sadly, extremely easy to manipulate the public, especially in times of turmoil or misery. Those are the lessons of this movie in a dramatic version of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.I found this movie to be deeply creepy because it was so plausible--the kids who voluntarily set up action groups they didn't know were going to be used for evil, the adults who wanted to get in on the action, the stirring up of hatreds, the impulse to not tell the public to "protect" them. Haunted houses and ghouls with chainsaws are nothing to me compared to the idea of people like this succeeding. The ideology doesn't matter. What matters is the power grab.

wes-connors ****** Keeper of the Flame (1942) George Cukor ~ Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Margaret Wycherly The film opens with the never appearing "Robert Forrest" dying in a car crash. Robert Forrest was, as it turn out, a great American hero; his tragic accident is big news; and, and the country mourns. Biographical journalist Spencer Tracy (as Steve O'Malley) decides to write a story about Forrest's life; but, the prospective "Keeper of the Flame" finds it difficult to interview beautiful Forrest widow Katharine Hepburn (as Christine). And, the people closest to the deceased accident victim are mysteriously uncooperative. What are they hiding? Tracy and Hepburn, under George Cukor's moody direction, are great fun to watch. Mr. Cukor and photographer William Daniels are especially Garbo-like when introducing Hepburn's character. Still, it's Tracy who holds everything together. The revelation about "Robert Forrest" was unexpected (to me, anyway); it was nice to see a film show the American belief system is based on ideas and truths rather than mindless patriotism.The film should have been better. First, the movie's main "romantic" relationship seems to occur too suddenly; certainly, the film's stars were capable of portraying a man and woman falling in love. Also, what did the Forrests' do? It's hinted, once, that "Christine" may have been an actress (believable); but, what office did her husband hold (if any)? Of the supporting cast, Margaret Wycherly seems truest, as the dead hero's "invalid" mother; a couple of the other players become more grating than effective, after a good first impression.

r_d_finch I recently watched "Keeper" on TCM. It was one of two Tracy-Hepburn films I had never seen, and I would rank it as the least successful of their films together. Director George Cukor and cinematographer William Daniels give this movie the full-out Gothic treatment, with obvious allusions to both "Citizen Kane" and "Rebecca." With its dark, "Citizen Kane" lighting, its heavy-handedly sinister atmosphere, its creepy Xanadu/Manderly-like fortress-mansion, its mad mother in the dower house (an interesting variation on "Jane Eyre"), its inexplicably hostile and secretive characters (including Richard Whorf as a worshipful male equivalent of Mrs. Danvers), its bizarrely ambiguous performance by Hepburn (is she mad, evil, a murderess, a faithful grieving widow, part of a cover-up conspiracy, a dupe?), it is certainly something to behold. But lacking any subtlety, it's just not that good. Hepburn's first appearance, dressed in white from head to toe and bearing an enormous bouquet of white flowers--more like a bride or vestal virgin than a grieving widow--as she glides toward an idealized portrait of her dead husband, borders on the camp. Only Tracy's consistently understated performance as the reporter and Percy Kilbride's incongruously comic turn as the skeptical Yankee cab driver withstand this ponderous approach. Hepburn's long final monologue, in which she reveals the truth about her dead husband to Tracy, is awkwardly declamatory and politically vague. I would recommend the movie for Hepburn-Tracy completists; just don't expect a very good film. For the record, to me the top Hepburn-Tracy movies are 1)"Adam's Rib," 2) "Woman of the Year," and 3) "Pat and Mike." The first and last of these were also directed by Cukor, but with a decidedly lighter touch.