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SHE WORE THAT DRESS! Under the very controlling direction of William Wyler, Bette Davis never falls into her usual Bette Davis mode in Jezebel. She’s allowed one or two scene-ending flourishes more than necessary, and no one could bring much conviction of the hopeless Clintonesque line, “Help me make myself clean again,” but throughout she’s as firmly this Julie as she’s ever been as any other character, except Margo in All About Eve. This movie has, in my view, one hugely fundamental flaw—that red dress comes too early in the story. Once Henry Fonda waltzes Davis around the ballroom floor, forcing a public humiliation for her defiance of social norms, the movie is over. If made today, with the chronology of details reversed and only slightly altered, the dress would be the picture’s climax—it would be used by Julie to publicly defy the man she saved from some disease, having risked her own life only to discover he really is the domineering bastard the movie suggests he is anyway. As it stands, the calamity of wearing the dress is basis for the on-going plot emotions but they don’t ring true. You don’t believe even for the duration of a single eyewink this Julie would give up men for white glove house cleaning. And when Fonda slaps his wrist to kill an insect, you’re cued Yellow Jack is festering at the nearest swamp—to ready Julie’s repentance. The extent to which Wyler and Warner Bros. wanted to beat Gone With the Wind to the screen seems obvious, and it’s been said Davis lost the role of Scarlett because of this picture. But Davis is no more Mitchell’s vixen than she is Albee’s “earth mother” Martha (another role she coveted); petite feminine wiles or spreading sexually inviting avenues are not her forte. (Movie lovers know why it’s probably true Davis’ four husbands beat her.) Davis and Fay Bainter won Oscars. Orry-Kelly designed some worthy dresses for the star except, oddly enough, the red one. (Arletty’s dark number in Children of Paradise is much better.) Despite the fact it was made of brown satin, it’s the reddest dress in the history of black and white movies.
Text COPYRIGHT © 2001 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |
