Classic Review: Little Women (1933)

Few books are as beloved as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and with good reason. Chronicling the lives of four sisters, the book gives us four distinguished heroines with strength, personality and deep love for each other. One of the best aspects of most adaptations (there were many) is how they manage to portray the love and deep connection these girls have for each other. Luckily, this original film adaptation succeeds in that too.

One would imagine that a synopsis isn’t really required at this point since it is such a popular book, but Little Women follows the March sisters who are living in Massachusetts in the 1800’s. Their father is our fighting the Civil war, and the house is run by their mother, Marmee (Spring Byington) who’s struggling to make ends meet. Jo (Hepburn) is a tomboy who wants to become a writer, and clashes with her wealthy aunt (Edna May Oliver); Meg (Frances Dee) works as a governess, and falls in love with a penniless teacher;  Beth (Jean Parker) is the most sensitive in the family, and she ends up getting scarlet fever from a family she’s trying to help; and Amy (Joan Bennett) is pretty but selfish, and wants to study art in Europe. Jo is courted by Laurie (Douglass Montgomery), but she only has eyes for her writings. She deflects his advances, and he ends up marrying Amy. But that’s okay because Jo has fallen for professor Bhaer (Lukas).

The beauty of Little Women is how seamless their stories unfold. There’s a particular sense of familiarity with the March sisters, and they always pull us in. That happens here too; it’s impossible not to care and deeply connect to them. The problem with this version is when it inevitably is compared to the other versions. Little Women has since been adapted countless times over the decades. This was probably the first prestige adaptation but there were at least three more that share the same prestige: 1949 with Elizabeth Taylor; 1994 with Winona Ryder; and 2019 with director Greta Gerwig and star Saoirse Ronan. Both 1994 and 2019’s versions are far better than this one. Hepburn is a great lead as Jo, and the entire cast works relatively well together. But there are some elements of the film that have not aged that well and end up lessening the material.

The film is very constricted in its sets, without giving the actors much freedom to walk around and use the space to their advantage; cinema was still adapting itself from the transition from silent to sound, and due to that, the acting hasn’t aged that well. It’s kind of ridiculous seeing the actors declaring their feelings while looking at the horizon instead of looking at each other. It’s perfectly understandable it was the way it was done at the time, but sometimes it’s just impossible not to laugh from such stagey performances, and even a great actress like Hepburn fell into that pit, and the theatricality of the mise-en-scène is quite tiring sometimes. But the most disturbing aspect of this version is the amount of makeup used by actor Douglass Montgomery. It was so exaggerated it made it difficult paying attention to anything else, distracting us every time he showed up on screen. Especially because it is noticeable that he is wearing way more makeup than Hepburn, his screen partner.

In the end, Little Women works because of the strength of the material. But with so many better versions of the same story, it ends up becoming a bit forgettable.

still courtesy of RKO Pictures

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