Publisher: CinemaSerf June 26, 2022
Bette Davis at her best took some beating, and here is one such an example. Together with expertly delivered performances from Claude Rains and Gladys Cooper we are presented with an emotional roller-coaster of a film. Davis starts as the hen-pecked daughter of Cooper, until she encounters Rains' "Dr. Jaquith" who decides that he may be able to help this erstwhile shy spinster find herself a little purpose in life. She is despatched on a cruise liner where she meets the married "Jerry" (Paul Henried) and though there is a semblance of a romance, it can come to nothing and it is only after a long, occasionally torrid but always riveting series of scenarios, that we begin to arrive at anything that might resemble a conclusion. Irving Rapper does really well to allow Max Steiner's score and an excellent Casey Robinson screenplay to empower his stars to create and develop characters in whom - especially Davis - we can readily invest. I have never been Henreid's biggest fan, I always found him just a little bit insipid, but he works well here as does a really on form Cooper in the role of her mother. Seen very recently on a big screen again after almost 80 years, and it has lost none of it's style, panache and wonderfully paced sense of the dramatic. Great stuff!