Perhaps one of the most compelling reasons to associate Bette Davis with Joan Crawford is that their greatest films (Mildred Pierce for Crawford and The Letter for Davis) both begin with the gunning down of their lovers. We then backtrack to see what led up to the shooting and to evaluate its justifiability. Although Crawford's character looks guilty at the beginning of Mildred Pierce, the film persuades us rather early on that she is innocent. And though Davis' Leslie Crosbie does a compelling job of persuading inspectors and prosecutors that she shot Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell) in self-defense, we come to suspect rather quickly that she is lying.
Need I observe that Bette Davis lies as compellingly as Beelzebub himself? Need I point out that she manages, even while uttering the most ridiculous falsehoods, to win our indulgence? Need I remind anyone who has ever seen Bette Davis in anything that it is when she begs us with her eyes for credibility that she doesn't have--it is precisely then that she always and invariably makes us understand what Kim Carnes was talking about in that pop song that made no sense to those of us who had never seen Bette Davis in action?
Leslie Crosbie is an incredibly shrewd and manipulative woman. She tells the story of how she came to empty her revolver into Geoffrey Hammond so compellingly that the arresting officer himself is moved to blurt, "You behaved magnificently." But it isn't diabolical enough for Leslie to commit murder and be complimented for it. She actually manages to convey a sort of self-effacing disappointment when she learns that she must be arrested as a matter of form. Although she doesn't say anything witty when she learns that she is to be arrested and held without bail, her face tells us precisely what she is thinking: "I just don't know what else I have to do to get away with murder around here!"
Fortunately, Davis isn't the only star allowed to shine in this film. Director William Wyler (who should be categorized as 'legendary' at the very least in my opinion) brings out the best in James Stephenson as Leslie's lawyer, Howard Joyce. And he also gives us a sort of male version of the sinister Leslie in Joyce's assistant, Ong Chi Seng (Victor Sen Yung). The Malay paralegal manages to come up with all the correct formulations in order to negotiate a blackmail deal that is essential to Leslie's acquittal. "What are you getting out of this," Joyce asks his assistant after having decided that he has no choice but to go through with the blackmail. "Two thousand dollars," replies Seng (who, unlike most Asians who were reduced to caricatures in '40s films, enunciates English perfectly), "and the great satisfaction of performing a service for you--and our client."
There's no getting around the fact that Seng is a weasel, but his ethnicity seems much less important in that regard than his gender. When a man is a weasel, other men spot him for what he is and know how to deal with him. But when a woman, such as Leslie, is effective at manipulation, it is truly horrifying (and fascinating) to the men around her. "It's strange," Joyce says after coming to an appreciation of how adept a liar Leslie is, "that a man could live with a woman for ten years and not know the first thing about her."
It is strange indeed, particularly since the usual response to Leslie's story (of how Hammond tried to rape her and she killed him only because she had to) is to characterize her as "the best wife a man could have." Leslie's selfishness is virtually unfathomable. After all but confessing to Joyce that she killed Hammond in a jealous rage, she asks him how he can just stand there instead of figuring out how to get the crucial piece of evidence from the woman whom she has widowed. "What harm have I done you?" she demands. "How could you be so cruel?" Those lines aren't easy to pull off. They reek of melodrama, and yet she manages to sell them, just as she manages to sell an even more outrageous line a little later: "You're trying to read my thoughts because I'm so evil. That's it, isn't it?"
Perhaps Wyler sold out by having justice done at the end of the film, but you'll have to watch it for yourself and decide whether he isn't trying to suggest something fairly courageous about the relationship between colonizers and the colonized. Does the exotic Mrs. Hammond (Gale Sondergaard), in all her gold chains and spangles, stand for some barbaric code of jungle law? Or does Wyler not rather invite us to see her as the cold, upright, and virtually unapproachable figure of Justice herself? Does she force Leslie to kneel before her because of her own pettiness or because of Leslie's? Because Wyler's films (The Big Country comes to mind) are so consistently about how we must not leap to conclusions, I'm inclined to think the latter. But even if you disagree, you'll be grateful for the opportunity that this excellent film will provide you to think for yourself.
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