Monday, March 20, 2006
BETTE
Bette Davis in today's NYTimes Best 1176 films.
is based on a Somerset Maugham story and comes on like gangbusters with Ms. Davis emptying her sixshooter into a man who turns out to have been her boyfriend.
Tasty.
The rest of the film is about, well, an incriminating letter which makes the shooting more homicidal than mere self defense.
See, no one knows it is her boyfriend; least of all Herbert Marshall who happens to be her husband. All that is in the letter.
William Wyler directed this and it is fully restored so that we can see the sometimes breathtaking black and white cinematography 'come to life'.
It is hard to imagine how they knew to use light and angles to produce these images. I suppose it is in the art of it.
Why this is so much more dramatic in b&w than color I do not know; but it is. Somewhere there must be a treatise on this.
The film moves right along and skirts the issues of race and culture as well as fidelity in a stiff upper lift expat colony in Singapore.
It is fun to watch Ms. Davis work. She is beginning to show the signs and mannerisms that made female impersonators a lot of money later on. Here, she is not a caricature of herself. Just solid Bette.
I liked it and will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.
It is not great cinema but a good time will be had by all.
