Keeper of the Flame

The least known and least successful of all the Hepburn-Tracy films, George Cukor’s Keeper of the Flame is more fascinating than it is good. Like a deformed Citizen Kane, it offers an outrageous stew of film noir, Gothic mystery, and political message film, flavored with pinches of screwball and romance. (Notably, the screwball element is provided by supporting player Audrey Christie who’s practically a clone of Hepburn in style, timing, and voice.) Tracy plays Steven O’Malley, a journalist pursuing an interview with the reclusive widow Christine (Hepburn) of the wealthy American hero Robert Forrest, recently perished in a car crash. After an initial encounter in her mansion, the two develop a bond of mutual curiosity and mutual admiration, but as O’Malley unearths the truth about her “heroic” husband, he puts both of their lives at risk. In addition to its blunt wartime pessimism (“Europe’s full of slaves, and we might be next”), the film’s most audacious element, especially given its 1943 release date, is its recognition of the threat of fascism — even Nazism — in America’s heartland at the feet of a charming, cultish personality capable of fomenting hate of certain categories of Americans. Its pacing is a bit slow at times, but Keeper of the Flame is a dream-like mystery with a lush visual landscape and a slow-boil eeriness underlying every scene.