I realized recently that a substantial blind spot for me in terms of classic Hollywood has been Bette Davis. She was one of the biggest and most powerful stars of her era, but I’d seen hardly anything from her peak period, knowing her mostly for All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? -films in which she’s supposed to be past her prime. So I decided to rectify that this past week by watching three films of hers I’d been curious about for a while: Of Human Bondage -her great breakout role, Now, Voyager -one of her most celebrated romantic roles, and Watch on the Rhine -an antifascist war drama. I liked the first and last quite a bit, but it was that middle one that I enjoyed the most and found especially exciting. And it seems to be the most apt to a conversation about Davis.
Davis had a great deal of control over Now, Voyager, seeking out and campaigning for the movie, reading the original book by Olive Higgins Prouty, and then exerting considerable influence over the choice of her co-stars, director, and wardrobe. She hand-picked director Irving Rapper, a personal friend with whom she had worked before and supported in his directing debut a year earlier. And after much deliberation she chose as her screen-partner Paul Henreid, a then up-and-coming Hollywood actor from Austria. It’s astonishing to think of now how Davis had so much power and agency, she could effectively dictate her own career within the studio system by thirty-four. This film I understand is one of the most known triumphs of her self-starting. It’s narratively different from the kinds of romances customarily offered in Hollywood at that time, as much about individual character development as a central relationship, and to that end it provided her a thoroughly interesting figure to play.
Davis’ Charlotte Vale begins the film a repressed unmarried woman past thirty, concretely under the thumb of her domineering mother (a detestable Gladys Cooper), shortly to be admitted to a psychiatric ward due to her somewhat manic personality. She’s in the full Donna Reed get-up from the alternate reality section of It’s a Wonderful Life: faded, dreary colours, unfashionable in design, hair kept neatly back and with thin wiry glasses. She’s even lit darkly to emphasize a woman living in the shadow of others. She is introverted among her mother and sister-in-law, but there is a suppressed fury there which she lets out at the prospect of being sent away to a sanitarium. The stigma of the psychiatric profession and needing help for mental illness is very much at play, and it petrifies her. But one of the movies’ first great surprises is that it doesn’t play into the stereotypes -in fact it goes out of its way to show the benefits of psychiatry and even of those demonized institutions. The one that Charlotte is sent to is run by the sympathetic Dr. Jaquith, played by the brilliant Claude Rains, in a rare part for him devoid of villainy or deviousness. And Charlotte comes out the other side of it transformed, both mentally and physically. By the time she boards a cruise as a personal reward at the end of her time there, she looks more like the beautiful, poised Davis. It’s not portrayed as a magical catch-all though, she still has confidence and anxiety issues, but she’s on the road to recovery. Dr. Jaquith gives her some advice as she departs and it’s clear their relationship has grown closer, she trusts him (Davis and Rains were indeed friends in real life and it shows in their chemistry).
However the film does kind of suggest a catch-all to her self-esteem and trauma issues: love. Because on the cruise she meets Henreid’s Jerry Duvaux Durrance, and through the course of this initial love affair that extends beyond the cruise itself, to being temporarily stranded together on a tour in Brazil and a brief sojourn in Buenos Aires at the conclusion of the adventure, she seems to go the rest of the away towards self-fulfilment. In fairness it is a pretty strong romance, Henreid’s natural suaveness serving him well as this mysterious European lover type. He and Charlotte have a lot in common in that he too is stuck in a toxic relationship with a neglectful wife who squelches his ambitions -ironically she seems exactly the sort of character Davis played in Of Human Bondage, in which Henreid would star in a remake of four years later. Their marriage is maintained only for the sake of Jerry’s daughter. Charlotte and Jerry’s relationship thus can only be this holiday fling. Davis and Henreid maybe don’t have quite the chemistry of other romantic pairings of this era -1942 alone saw Colman-Garson in Random Harvest and of course Bogart-Bergman in Henreid’s other huge career milestone, Casablanca. But they’re both such good romantic actors individually that it doesn’t seem to matter. Davis has those perfect deep eyes, with which she can convey so much intense feeling -one scene in which she’s tearing up in a later meeting with Jerry, the dialogue is nothing special, but the scene is unexpectedly affecting purely on the strength of her expressiveness. And Henreid is a natural as well, Hollywood handsome and with striking features; and his recurring signature in which he lights two cigarettes in his mouth before handing one to Davis, is immensely cool. They have great charisma certainly, their scenes together wonderful to watch as you can see him palpably bringing out more of the best in her. The tragedy in their parting does resonate, and yet is also treated with some authenticity.
In spite of this, back home a more assured and empowered Charlotte stuns the family, and it’s wonderful to see her standing up to her mother and her continued attempts to suppress her. And I should note both how good Coopers’ performance is and how well the movie portrays a toxic parent. Jerry’s wife being so cold and vindictive is one thing, but to apply those traits to a parent, and to suggest said parent is irredeemable is pretty brutal for the 1940s. To openly confirm that she never wanted Charlotte to begin with is even more harsh. Cooper is wonderfully vile in this, stubborn and narcissistic and mean, and you can see the power of her influence even after Charlotte’s been through the extensive therapy and romance. In some regards she still can’t help but fall under her mothers’ sway. The relationship she enters next with a well-off older man Elliot (John Loder), though she does so on her own terms, is still selected and approved by her mother. And when she breaks it off over her lingering love for Jerry, even though she can never be with him, it shocks and infuriates her mother to the point of a fatal heart attack. The specific dagger being Charlotte firing back at her for the first time is particularly interesting, the notion of a burst ego being what kills her.
Charlotte makes to apologize immediately in the wake of this comment as perhaps a way for the film to rescue her virtuous characterization -as though the subsequent guilt and depression wouldn’t be enough. Her relapse and return to the sanitarium (this time of her own volition -the stigma gone) emphasizes well the volatility of mental health without indicting the credibility of the care. It’s here too in the third act that her story intersects with Jerry again, after a brief reunion at a party, through his much-referenced daughter in the same institution, to whom Charlotte becomes a friend and confidante. Though she initially approaches Tina (Janis Wilson) in honest sympathy, it soon becomes apparent who she is, and at that point her cultivating a relationship with the girl can’t help but feel slightly duplicitous. The movie makes the smart choice however to hold off on Jerry himself appearing and hone in on Charlotte’s maternal impulses as the driving factor in the relationship (Davis in fact liked Wilson so much that she cast her as her daughter in Watch on the Rhine as well). And it actually does kind of work, Davis convincing you that Charlotte cares less about inserting herself into Jerry’s life again, replacing Tina’s mother in that capacity only, and more a sense of wanting someone to care for and being a mother-figure for its’ own sake -especially in the knowledge that Tina’s was like her own and desiring to provide something better. It’s clear she loves Tina and sees looking after her as her important role at this point in time.
Eventually, when we do see Jerry again, meeting Charlotte, Tina, and Dr. Jaquith at the Vale home where Tina is now residing, his and Charlotte’s relationship is substantially different. There’s a great moment where he condescends to her over her seeming lack of mobility since they last met, but that’s not what’s important to Charlotte and she calls him out for it -a “you’re not feminist enough” analogue that is swiftly dismissed. Earlier, she’d taken up care for Tina in sacrifice of romance with Jerry, and though it hurts she seems content in the decision. In fact, she states outright she’s happy -and though that line of Tina being Jerry’s “gift” to Charlotte has problem connotations in removing Tina’s agency, there’s another popular line this movie spawned that’s more meaningful: “let’s not ask for the moon, we have the stars”.
Charlotte does not end up with Jerry in the end, though she still loves him. She’s found meaning and a joy in life that she attributes to him, but also clearly forged for herself, even if he’s not a part of it. It’s a beautiful ending, one that suggests a worthwhile life doesn’t have to require marriage or even a typical romantic loving relationship. It says that not all dreams will come true, that a perfect is life elusive, but that happiness and satisfaction can still be found. And maybe most importantly it shows that anyone can achieve this, that it’s possible to escape abusive family structures, to find confidence and come into your own, and that therapy is good, actually. Sure, it’s rudimentary -the film avoids specific clinical psychological terms like depression, anxiety, trauma, schizophrenia -possibly due to those not being widely known or studied yet. But it still emphatically supports the idea that getting help is healthy for ones’ mental well-being.
Now, Voyager is a daring movie. It’s a tremendous Bette Davis performance and is ahead of its’ time in its’ psychological discussions and even somewhat its’ romance (Charlotte and Jerry are seen technically sleeping together at one point). The title comes from Walt Whitman: “The untold want by life and land ne’er granted, now voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find”. Everyone has some untold want, whether they know it or not; Now, Voyager stands to illustrate it can indeed be found.
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