Mary of Scotland

Lovely Mary Stuart -- queen of Scotland and France, but only sometime ruler of her own heart -- careens through a tumultuous life doomed to end with the flash of an executioner's blade. Men flatter her, then betray her. Her people embrace her, then vilify her. And her cousin Elizabeth I, fearful of Mary's claim to England's throne, imprisons her, then sends her to the scaffold. Directed by the legendary John Ford and adapted from Maxwell Anderson's powerful play, Mary of Scotland gave Katharine Hepburn one of her finest early roles. Both fierce and fragile as the headstrong queen, Hepburn is brilliantly matched by Fredric March as her courageous lover Bothwell and by Florence Eldridge as Elizabeth, who is everything Mary is not: physically plain, politically shrewd and victorious.

• drama