Plot Intro
Joyce Heath (Bette Davis) is a once-promising but now washed-up actress in New York City. On one of her many drunken sojourns, she is encountered by a wealthy architect, Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) who is engaged to also-wealthy Gail Armitage (Margaret Lindsay). Don was inspired to become an architect by an early performance of Joyce’s. Struck by her fragile, self-hating state, he takes her into his home to begin caring for her- and then starts falling in love with her…
We quickly arrive at another titan of Old Hollywood. Bette Davis is an extremely familiar name in households, even if you haven’t seen one of her films. She’s probably most closely associated with melodramas involving vengeance and, often, murder, thanks to her energetic performances of morally questionable, emotionally broken or downright evil women.
Dangerous is no exception. It’s a very early example of Davis’ work and very much in the centre of her “Golden Age”, when she was churning out hits and garnering pretty much annual Best Actress nominations for them. It’s certainly obvious why she became popular so quickly. She has a penetrating glare, a snarl to give you goosebumps and can go from ranting furiously to breaking down in tears across expensive furniture AND make it convincing!
In fact, as with many of the Best Actress wins so far, she’s so strong that she exposes the glaring faults of the rest of the movie. The story was the biggest problem. It starts off with so much promise. We don’t really meet Joyce properly until a couple of scenes in and we get our first impressions of her through the gossip and memories of other characters. There is some mention of a “jinx” on Joyce’s career, which apparently started when her first leading man, and I quote, “got killed”!
What on earth happened? Who is Joyce? Is there really some sort of jinx? The script skillfully sets up these questions ready to be answered. It does a great job of keeping them going for a bit longer. We meet Joyce - she’s broken and wallowing in self-pity. She pushes people away deliberately convinced that they’ll get hurt around her. Don’s housekeeper warns him “that girl’s dangerous!” Even more suspense!
And the movie does EXACTLY what we don’t want it to do. It descends into sloppy sentimentality. The antagonism between Joyce and Don turns into a real, soliloquy-laden romance. The “jinx” turns out to be nothing but Joyce’s own self-doubt and irrationality. The leading man who mysteriously “got killed” is forgotten about entirely. The film’s only real twist (that Joyce is still married) is a massive letdown when we discover that her husband is actually just a nice man.
So what was set up as a melodrama with some juicy twists incoming just becomes limp-wristed mush. The set-up was truly superb but even Davis’ energy wasn’t enough to save it’s impending fate. For better examples of her work, I would suggest her debut performance in 1934 in Of Human Bondage, her later performance in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, and her seminal and most defining work, All About Eve. I would also highly recommend Ryan Murphy’s miniseries, Feud, which charts the alleged rivalry between Davis (played by Susan Sarandon) and another Best Actress winner, Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange). Incidentally, both Sarandon and Lange are Best Actress winners too! It’s tear-jerking stuff.
Highlight
The opening set-up is exciting, especially the hints at a dark past for Joyce.
Lowlight
Basically the entire second half. But the very end scene which reveals Joyce deciding to try rekindle her relationship with her husband despite having tried to murder him in a car accident is not one for the Hollywood Hall of Fame.
Mark
3/10
Doug says...
It’s a sad fact that as a hard-of-hearing person, watching these early films is sometimes a bit of an ordeal. Most of the films so far have crackly or poor sound, and barely any of them come with subtitles. In a world where platforms such as Netflix have understood and embraced their responsibility to be inclusive of people with auditory or visual impairments, it’s extraordinarily frustrating.
I will be abstaining from the highlight, lowlight and mark because I was unable to follow or understand what was going on. This is the first time I’ve had to do this and I am truly disappointed. What upsets me more is that this is one of two times we see Bette Davis, who is one of my all-time favourite actresses. So instead of talking about the film, I’m going to talk about Bette Davis - although we won’t cover everything as she does (thankfully) get another appearance in this project, and I have already confirmed we have access to subtitles for that one!
Bette Davis was a hoofer of the first degree. She worked. Born in 1908, she began work on stage, and quickly moved to performing on Broadway when she was just 21. A year later in 1930 she moved to Hollywood and spent two unsuccessful years, being labelled as low sex appeal and nervous. It was as she was preparing to return to New York that she got given the lead female role in The Man Who Played God by fellow actor George Arliss. It was to him that Davis would always credit her resulting break through into stardom.
Films quickly followed with Of Human Bondage gaining Davis major critical acclaim. Davis was not nominated for the Oscar’s Best Supporting Actress - a decision that drew so much outrage from audiences (including nominee Norma Shearer!), that for the first - and currently only - time, the Academy announced her as a nominee after the ceremony had taken place.
Bette went on to be in this film Dangerous, winning the Oscar. Her acting - fresh and often full of vitality and power - was a breath of air in the industry. It also meant she missed out on some very famous gigs including It Happened One Night and Gone With The Wind - some directors didn’t want to take a chance on such an actress.
Davis is most known for a handful of roles, but her filmography is prolific. She simply had to work, and would take pretty much any role, preferring unlikeable, tempestuous characters who she could channel energy into. Films like The Little Foxes, Now Voyager, Dark Victory, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex allowed her to take risks playing characters who were a far cry from the passive unimpeachable women that saturated screen dramas only a few years before.
Divorced three times by 1950 and married four times (a final divorce in 1960), her love-life was eventful and she had three children. And it was in 1950 that Davis would go on to star in - in my opinion - her masterpiece, All About Eve. But we’ll leave it there for now.
Highlight
Abstained.
Lowlight
Abstained.
Marks
Abstained.
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