Bette Davis

(On Cable TV, June 2019) One of the disadvantages of looking at a past movie star’s body of work is that the later evolution of their screen persona can unfairly prejudice some of their earlier work. When I think about Bette Davis, for instance, I’m picturing a tart-tongued anti-heroine with panache. In Now, Voyager, however, we’re asked to believe her as a timid spinster who blooms as she travels around the world and falls for a sophisticated man. I am, in other words, not entirely convinced by Davis as a romantic ingenue (although she does look cute in round glasses), and the film’s opening sequences are a wild ride as the film crams an entire film’s worth of character development in a few minutes. Still, it clears the air for more complex romantic drama in an old-school sense, with some emphasis on mental health issues. The story is not quite as happy as you’d expect from a Golden-age Hollywood movie. While Now, Voyager may not be the film you’d expect, it does get better as it goes on and builds to a wistful romantic climax with classic imagery and dialogue (“Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”)  No wonder it’s fondly remembered even today.

(On Cable TV, February 2019) There is, in many ways, something comforting in the kind of domestic costume melodrama that is All This, and Heaven Too: As the story of a French governess who ends up being at the centre of a rollicking story of lust and murder, it’s clearly meant to thrill audiences. It would have been significantly better if it had been shorter—there isn’t that much plot here, and the film clocks in at a punishing 141 minutes with plenty of repetition along the way. I’m also not entirely convinced about Bette Davis as a young innocent romantic heroine—she’s a terrific actress, but her uncanny ability to play evil characters is wasted here in a role meant to be almost angelic. The framing device isn’t too bad in allowing a Paris-based story to be literally told to an American audience, although it does add even more length to a film already overstuffed with tangents. (Including a gothic Halloween interlude that’s actually not too bad.) Even today, the expensive nature of All This, and Heaven Too’s production is obvious: the lavish sets, costumes and re-creation of late-Nineteenth century Paris is quite successful. Modern viewers will still have something to watch in between the increasingly lurid story, and Bette Davis in a strong (even if miscast) performance.