What should have been a powerful and stirring historical drama, Mary of Scotland comes across as rather tepid, if lavishly mounted. Much has been made of the fact that Ginger Rogers dearly wanted to play Elizabeth in the film but was not allowed to; while she would probably have provided a greater spark to the proceedings than the fine-but-no-more Florence Eldridge, the role is too small for such a change to have seriously improved the film. Much of the film's failure is due to the casting of Katharine Hepburn in a role that doesn't suit her. Unlike the actual historical Mary, the film's heroine is too soft and too much a victim; if she had been given the fire, the passion for power and the near-ruthlessness that belonged to the "real" Mary, Hepburn might have been given something to really sink her teeth into. Instead, she wanders through the film without enough backbone, content to be reduced to a romantic heroine rather than a strong-willed would-be ruler. Most of Maxwell Anderson's dialogue has been dispensed with in the screen adaptation, which works both in its favor and to its detriment: the blank verse might have seemed stilted onscreen, but its absence robs the work of a certain amount of grandeur. Fredric March does a good job supplying some of that grandeur, Douglas Walton is quite good as Mary's sleazy husband and John Carradine scores points as the loyal aide. Director John Ford doesn't seem truly at home with the material, but he and cinematographer Joseph H. August give the film a striking visual look, especially in the different manners in which they shoot Mary and Elizabeth. If Mary ultimately is rather boring, it still has a good deal of visual appeal.