While Watching "Now, Voyager"...

...I couldn't help but wonder if a movie like this could be made in our times. Hell if it would've been made a few years after it was made.
The first part of the movie now would be turned into a satire or a parody a la Ugly Betty while the second part, which is unarguably fucked up would have been a perfect vehicle for Glenn Close in the 80's.
Why is it then that given its historical context and despite the fact that we don't need to try hard to see beyond its sentimentalism and lush manipulation, it works such wonders?
Now excuse me while I go wipe my tears.

Don't Judge a Movie by Its VHS Cover.

Growing up, every time I passed by the Classics shelf in my video club I'd stare with wide eyes at all the riches I'd yet to see in my film education.
This way I usually passed "Separate Tables" looked at it in a weird way and never even bothered to read the back cover to see what the movie was actually about.
When I became an Oscar obsessive I realized the film had won David Niven a Best actor Oscar in 1958 (a year on which my knowledge is quite limited) and Niven, let's put it this way, has never been one of my favorite actors (I blame the godawful "Around the World in 80 Days" for feeling like this).
However; I finally ended up watching the film (in my ongoing attempt to watch every Best Picture nominee ever made), and to my surprise it was a pretty good movie, damn good actually.
Excellent cast, a brilliant screenplay and an altogether marvelous experience.
What I thought would be an affected comedy of manners was instead a serious ensemble drama providing some career best work for the likes of Burt Lancaster (he should've been nominated instead of Niven) and Rita Hayworth.
I was also surprised to see how good, if a bit forced, Deborah Kerr was playing a frumpy, submissive daughter (think Bette Davis in "Now, Voyager" and what are the odds her mom is also played by Gladys Cooper).
The plot touches some rather hard topics, they say the word "sex" more times than I thought would've been decent for the era and according to sources the film was rather scandalous at the time of its release.
Now it's pretty tame though, but it's still worth a watch.
And would you blame me for thinking this would suck with a cover like this?

The Star.

"She did it the hard way."

- Inscription on her tombstone.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary actress Bette Davis.

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and from an early age demanded attention, which to some meant that she was destined to become a star.

After starting a career as a supporting player in some pictures very few remember she got her big break with "Of Human Bondage" which kickstarted a career that would account for two Oscars and ten Best Actress nominations, as well as awards from Cannes, the AFI and many other groups.

Her career included highs and lows, a bitchy delicious comeback and an eternal feud with Joan Crawford which has become the thing of legend.

At one point known as "The Fifth Warner Brother" she was one of the most influential actresses that ever lived and helped to form the craft as we know it today.

With this in mind, here are the best Bette Davis moments.

5. William Wyler

The famous director led her to three Academy Award nominations, including one win, and extracted some of her greatest performances. But the story behind it goes that he was the love of her life. Davis was married four different times and while she loved Wyler, he wouldn't bring himself to get a divorce.

Despite of this you can feel something watching the way she always looks her best in his films. In "Jezebel" she's luminous, in "The Letter" she has otherworldly qualities and in "The Little Foxes" she is irresistibly sexy. That she plays villainesses in all three can't be coincidence.

4. President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

In January 1941 she was elected as the first female president of AMPAS.

Her term didn't last long as her radical proposals and outspoken manners created controversy within conservative Academy members who threatened her with boycotting her ideas.

Going back in time you can only begin to wonder what Davis' could've done for the Academy. Perhaps she would've created better Foreign Language Film rules than the ones we have today or started the category in those years for starters.

As an actress she never hid her lust for Oscar. She claimed to have given the statuette its nickname and at one point was trying so hard to get a third Oscar that when Katharine Hepburn got it (in a tie) Davis was quoted as saying "I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose."

She resigned from the presidency and was preceded by Jean Hersholt.

He implemented the changes she'd suggested.

3. Bette vs. Joan

Not that you can justify feuds, which were highly popular between stars in those days, but hers with Joan Crawford led to some of her most inspired remarks.

"I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire."
"She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie."

"Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Joan Crawford always plays ladies."

"You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good!"

2. Her eyes.

There is no song about Clark Gable's moustache or about Grace Kelly's cheekbones.

Not that any should be made, but you get my point.

1. Her performances.

She once said "I have been uncompromising, peppery, infractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile and offtimes disagreeable. I suppose I'm larger than life."

Watching her act there's no way you can question it.

The Top Five.

5. Baby Jane Hudson in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane".

Despite the fact that she had the opportunity to destroy Joan Crawford onscreen she took camp and Grand Guignol and delivered a harrowing cautionary tale about the effects of showbiz in young people.

Nobody else could be so heartbreaking while wearing a child's costume and going insane.

4. Julie Marsden in "Jezebel"/Mildred Rogers in "Of Human Bondage"

Her two most famous villainous roles came in consecutive years and while Julie's ball scandal can be seen as saintly compared to Mildred's disdain for Philip, the truth is that Davis never allowed them to become just bad people.

In fact after Julie is compared to the biblical character (a woman who did evil wherever she went) you realize this is nothing like her. The sparkle that shuts down in her eyes after hearing this squeezes your heart and takes your breath away.

Oh and she makes us see the red in that dress!

3. Charlotte Vale in "Now, Voyager"

She practically invented "Ugly Betty" but did it so in a restrained, absolutely elegant way.

At the beginning of this film she is forced to wear an awful wig, spectacles and hideous eyebrows, but Davis knew better than to let the quirks speak for her character and once she transforms into a glamorous lady she leaves us no doubt that this is what she was from the start.

2. Leslie Crosbie in "The Letter"

This was one of the first Davis films I saw and to date it's perhaps my favorite of her performances. I was completely mesmerized by her screen presence. I trusted her character and when she pulls the rug from under our feet I couldn't do anything else than to understand her motivations. Playing a murderess in a South Pacific plantation you see as the guilt eats her up and just when she thinks she's had her atonement the film takes another twist.

"With all my heart, I still love the man I killed." she utters and you don't stop believing her for a second.

1. Margo Channing in "All About Eve"

Davis said "Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?".

There's little one can add to what is regarded as one of the finest performances in film history.

Davis was known to have issues with aging and Margo (who at one point call herself a junkyard) goes through the same during the film, but you can't say she's playing herself.

What she does with Channing goes beyond magic, the film's title talks about someone else, yet she is the one person you can't stop thinking about.

The greatest screenplay ever written wouldn't have been the same without someone like Davis to bring it to life.

When lines like "Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke." can make you giggle out of the blue, you know for sure that you witnessed something out of this world.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't just sit there...

"Don't get up. And please stop acting as if I were the queen mother. "

- Bette Davis as Margo Channing in "All About Eve"

Yet in a way, she was just that.

Southern Belles.

In this corner we have Bette Davis in "Jezebel".
In the other corner we have Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the Wind".
Hollywood history has always places these characters against each other. And it seems kind logical they would.
After all they have some similarities.

"Jezebel" 1938
Julie Marsden: a spoiled New Orleans belle engaged to Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda) who spends most of the film acting with no regard for the consequences or for others; in the process causing death, breakups and more gossip than a plantation can handle.
By film's end she discovers she is not who she thought she was and is forced to take a hard decision that completely changes the course of her life.
Scandal dress: a red gown she wears to the Olympian Ball. She was supposed to wear white...
Time conscious phrase: "This is 1852 dumplin', 1852, not the Dark Ages. Girls don't have to simper around in white just because they're not married. "
Cute ironic moment: "Why do you treat me like a child? "
Epiphany: "I'm askin' for the chance to prove I can be brave and strong and unselfish. Help me, Amy. Help me make myself clean again as you are clean. Let me prove myself worthy of the love I bear him. "
Best Actress Oscar: Yes.

"Gone With the Wind" 1939
Scarlett O'Hara: a spoiled Southern belle who spends her days lusting over Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) and goes around flirting with everyone with no regard for the consequences or for others; in the process she causes deaths, breakups and more gossip than a small town bazaar can handle.
By film's end she discovers she is far from being who she thought she was and is forced to take a hard decision that completely changes the course of her life.
Scandal dress: a black mourning gown she wears to the Atlanta bazaar. She wasn't even supposed to be there...
Time conscious phrase: "War, war, war; this war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides... there isn't going to be any war. "
Cute ironic moment: "Ooh, if I just wasn't a lady, WHAT wouldn't I tell that varmint. "
Epiphany: "As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again. "
Best Actress Oscar: Yes.

Truth be told, despite these things in common, each of the performances is a unique work of art, but Hollywood loves its feuds, especially those that never even happened and a legend has been built around the idea that "Jezebel" was made because Bette made a tantrum after she lost the part of Scarlett.
People have called it Davis' "Gone With the Wind" and while that idea inspires catfight fantasies in movie lovers, the real deal is that it was nothing like this.
When "Jezebel" was made Scarlett was still the role everyone was dying for. Bette Davis was always top choice and if anything in "Jezebel" has something to do with "Gone With the Wind" you might say perhaps that "Jezebel" is the most expensive audition tape in Hollywood history.
Bette didn't get the role, but she got her second Oscar and entered the history books.
Not so bad for a "second place" huh?

The Love That Lifted a Man to Paradise...

...and Hurled Him Back to Earth Again

The man would be Philip Carey (Leslie Howard); a sensitive, club-footed artist who is forced to study medicine after his art work is deemed mediocre in Paris.

The film would be "Of Human Bondage".

In London Philip meets Mildred Rogers (Bette Davis) an illiterate tearoom waitress with whom he becomes infatuated and obsessed.

He sees her in his anatomy books and fails his medical midterm because he can't get her out of his head.

He invites her to the theater and courts her, to which she usually replies "I don't mind" with her heavy Cockney accent. Then one day she announces she will get married to Miller (Alan Hale), an older salesman, and asks Philip to get over her.

He obviously doesn't and throughout the story Mildred will exert a strange power over him that will lead him to forgive her every single time, giving her an apartment while she flirts with his best friend and leading to a tragic conclusion.

Based on W. Somerset Maugham's autobiographical novel and directed by John Cromwell, this is the most famous of the film versions, mostly because of what it wasn't.

In what to this day remains a known anecdote for film buffs and award insiders, the movie, which resulted in unanimous praise for Davis, was not nominated for a single Academy Award.

It was Davis' twenty third film, but considering this was in the studio system era when actors were forced into contract films and ended up starring in up to four films a year (Bette herself had four more pictures released in 1934) we can say that this was her breakthrough.

She'd been working since 1931 and was 25 when "Of Human Bondage" was released. The critics loved her work, mostly because it was a total revelation.

Legend has it that Leslie Howard wasn't so keen on working with the newbie and started the film acting carelessly; later, he would constantly try to up his game in order to catch up with his ferocious costar.

Now it seems unbelievable to think back of a time where Howard's name had top billing and Davis was an unknown. Makes you wonder what the actor would've accomplished if it hadn't been for his untimely death. He apparently was very influential, even giving Bogie his first major role, but that's a story for another occasion.

When Oscar announced its nominations in 1935 the film failed to be nominated in every single category, the biggest upset was of course Best Actress.

Davis would be quoted as saying her career was BM and AM (before Maugham and after Maugham respectively) which is a small example of how big the film was in her life.

After Davis' snub, Hollywood went beserk and for the one and only time in Academy history there was a write-in nominee.

Since the Academy didn't allow this in its rules, official records don't show the nomination, but it happened.

And so did this performance, a tour de force in which her sexiness and vulgarity played side to side, luckily it's pre-Code so the sexuality of the characters is on the surface.

Her Cockney accent is perfect, but the work she does with her mannierisms and eyes is the real wonder here. Somehow she makes Mildred someone so awful and revolting that you can't stand her, but at the same time you understand why Philip takes her back every single time.

In her last scene (a shocking transformation that doesn't happen outside as it does within her) you make up your mind about your feelings toward Mildred and whether they are good or bad, very few performances in history dig so deep under your skin.

It's as if we were bound to her in some way or another.

As every human being is to something or other.

"To be Queen is to be less than human...

...it's to put pride before desire."

Wearing very white makeup and a shaved hairline, Bette Davis played Elizabeth I in 1939's "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex".

Starring opposite (in more ways than one) Errol Flynn as the Earl of Essex, the film chronicles the love affair between both characters and the crown that ultimately separated them.

While director Michael Curtiz does his best to create a compelling drama, sometimes the story comes off looking as a bit shallow and merely at the service of the sumptuous Technicolor cinematography and Orry-Kelly costumes (an inspiration for last year's Elizabeth film perhaps?).

Sometimes the actions lead us to think that this is an essay on how rulers first and foremost are human, leading them to commit mistakes in the name of their very essence.

But is it really safe to say that Queen Elizabeth I would force her troops to withdraw from Ireland just because she was having a lovers' quarrel?

While Errol Flynn is at his charming best (that he chooses to use his Aussie accent proves just how much of a star he knew he was) and Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price and Donald Crisp are satisfying in supporting roles, the film ultimately belongs to Davis.

Giving one of her best, and curiously less famous, performances she chews the scenery, does her best British accent and commands her subjects without ever losing perspective of the more personal side of what it's like to be a woman who happens to be a queen.

Davis was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar that year for "Dark Victory" which she said was her personal favorite.

In the movie's greatest scene she declares her love to Essex, only to minutes later realize this love could bring down her entire kingdom.

The shift in the mood occurs in the blink of an eye and despite all the wigs, jewels and clothes she has on, Davis is practically naked up there.

She would reprise the role later in her career and some of the themes in the plot would surface along her majestic filmography.

Bette Davis Week.

To celebrate the centennial of one of the greatest film stars that ever lived, it's "Bette Davis Week" at Movies Kick Ass.

Visit the site where I will be reviewing a brand new (to me at least) Davis' movie every day until Saturday when I'll be counting down on my favorite Bette moments.

And right here at the blog there'll be quotes, pictures and all sorts of things from her films.

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy week.