Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) is an impulsive, headstrong Southern Belle in New Orleans, mid-1800s. She’s engaged to austere but handsome businessman Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda). When Dillard irritates her by missing a meeting, Julie decides to get revenge by wearing the whorish colour of red to a prestigious ball, rather than virginal white. Her actions leave her socially ostracised and Dillard furiously breaks off the marriage. But as time passes and a pandemic (how ironic) hits New Orleans, Julie tries to find a way to win back the life she had.
Doug says...
This is, rather guttingly, our last brush with Bette Davis in this project. I’m going to run over the film pretty quickly because I want to discuss Davis, labelled one of the greatest actresses of all time by the American Film Institute, second only to Katharine Hepburn.
The film is a bit shoddy, and is very much a weak blueprint of Gone With The Wind, released a year later and for which Davis was a popular choice for the main role (losing out as she did to Vivien Leigh). It’s full of big skirts and is a hair’s breadth away from a ‘fiddle dee dee’. The plot also abruptly switches halfway through - from torrid romance to disaster movie - as suddenly everyone is desperately trying not to catch and die from Yellow Fever. It’s a slight jolt writing this in the middle - as we are - of the global Coronavirus pandemic, but it actually helped me understand the desperation portrayed on screen. Faye Bainter as Davis’ aunt is excellent (and won Best Supporting Actress) and it’s an enjoyable if ultimately unbelievable film.
But Bette Davis is wonderful. The thing that I missed - the Davis thing - from her first Best Picture win, is here. It’s not fully present but it is there, an unfurling of her astonishing screen presence, her willingness to be unattractive or unpleasant, and ultimately magnetic. I’m delighted because my favourite thing about Davis is that she doesn’t let anyone else have the screen. It’s hers.
One of Davis’ last ever acting roles was in 1986’s Murder with Mirrors, an adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel and opposite the also-great actress Helen Hayes in her last ever role. Davis had had a stroke and was clearly struggling, the left side of her mouth downturned. She is frequently sitting during the filming and the bombastic fire of her greatest roles is completely absent. It’s quite a flat performance. But during one scene, as her character finds out the treachery of the people around her, she stretches out a hand to her friend in sorrow, and suddenly the full force of her sheer talent captivates you. Even then - shrivelled, damaged and only three years before her death - Bette Davis retained the magic of a great Hollywood actress.
For me her greatest moment is in 1950’s All About Eve, where at the age of 42, she bounds around the stage with flair and fire, combining the camp with the emotional till you are almost breathless. No one else can deliver the line ‘fasten your seatbelts’ like Davis. It was - to my mind - criminal that she didn’t win a third Oscar for it. But Davis wasn’t proud and would famously take any role. She cared most that she was working. Search her name on Amazon Prime and you’ll see a host of films come up, many that you’ve never heard of. We’ve watched a few and some of them are diabolical - or they would be except for Davis at the heart of it, working her arse off to entertain and amuse - and always succeeding.
She was also a consummate professional. When working on Death on the Nile in her 70s, she was still always - as she was all her career - the first one on set, the first one in hair and make up and the first one to be line perfect. Co-star and fellow legend Angela Lansbury said that she felt the reason Davis liked her was that she took it as seriously, and turned up at the same time. It mattered, to Davis, that everyone was there to work.
I am genuinely sad that we won’t get to go on the same journey in this project that we will with Katharine Hepburn, checking in with her at various points along the way. But I still have a host of her films to discover independently - hugely well regarded ones like Now, Voyager, The Little Foxes and The Whales of August.
What would Bette Davis say, I wonder, if she were alive now and saw us excitedly rhapsodising over the joys of her back catalogue? I rather suspect she would sneer, stub out a cigarette, and ask ‘what’s next?’
Highlight
Bette Davis getting into her talent. Joy.
Lowlight
The sudden switch of the film to being all about Yellow Fever.
Mark
8/10
Paul says...
Movie nerds and homosexuals alike may have noticed the strong similarities between this and next week’s Best Actress winning movie, Gone With the Wind. Both are set in the slave-loving, plantation-dwelling South, both feature a young, spoilt heroine who keeps screwing up her life (although Julie is far less heroic and strong-minded as Scarlet O’Hara) and both feature a turgid love story against a dramatic historical backdrop.
The fact that you’ve never heard of Jezebel (I’m assuming) correctly implies that it’s a sub-par Gone With the Wind. It’s shorter, simpler and, quite frankly, sillier. It starts off very strong, with Davis giving a more controlled performance than she did in her first Best Actress movie (admittedly, she’s playing a more controlled character), and I really enjoyed the way as simple an action as wearing red ends up becoming the crux of the tale. The scene at the ball is magnificently done with turning heads, tutting of lips and glares thrown about, giving a sense that what seemed like a simple prank has escalated beyond control. It doesn’t feel daft at all, it’s intensely convincing. And Davis does a superb job of showing Julie go from triumph to discomfort, while Fonda’s masochistic fury also hits hard.
Jezebel doesn’t manage to maintain this liveliness and the pace slows a lot throughout the second half before culminating in a climax that wasn’t very convincing at all. But it’s helped along by the sort of soaring orchestral music and huge costumes, scenery and crowd scenes that keep most epics galvanised. Plus a lovely performance from Faye Bainter as Julie’s moralistic Aunt, who won Best Supporting Actress for this role. It’s far stronger than Davis’ first Best Actress win, but Gone With the Wind is about to crush it a year later.
Incidentally, Davis got this role as compensation for not getting the role of Scarlet. Although she was never seriously considered, she was the number one actress of the year and a firm favourite among audiences for such a coveted role. Her career remained stable throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s but as time went on even Davis admitted that balancing her turbulent personal life with her perfectionist, hard-working nature in her professional life was a struggle. Throughout the 50s, her films became less successful. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was supposed to be her comeback and she did garner another Best Actress nomination for it, but she never quite gained the same success as in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
But, tough and tenacious as ever, she kept going, usually playing either the lead in sub-standard thrillers (I recommend Dead Ringer, which is good for a laugh) or supporting parts in other movies, such as the successful Death on the Nile. Davis is admirable in that, even in her mature years, she would unashamedly take a role so that she could work and support herself.
Her rivalry with Joan Crawford is much speculated on. Although the two actresses differ massively in looks and acting style, they seemed to attract very similar roles. They also suffered from their respective daughters both writing “tell-all” memoirs that condemned them as abusive. The veracity of Crawford’s (called Mommy Dearest) has divided many (and we’ll deal with that in more detail when Crawford wins her Best Actress Oscar in the ‘40s). Davis’ (called My Mother’s Keeper), meanwhile, is widely condemned as false.
Davis worked almost right up to her dying day, despite years of ill health. She died from breast cancer in 1989, and her tombstone reads “She did it the hard way”.
Highlight
The ballroom scene is tense and excruciating. Drama is better when everyone’s wearing mid-nineteenth century gowns.
Lowlight
A lengthy scene leading up to Julie inadvertently instigating a duel. It goes on so long that the suspense is lost.
Mark
8/10
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