Judith Traherne (Davis) is a spoiled rich girl who spends her days with her horses and partying with her friends. She’s been having headaches, though, and one day while riding a horse she hopes to turn into a steeplechase champion, she takes a tumble. A fall down the stairs leads to her being dragged to the doctor by her best friend Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Her regular doctor, Dr. Parsons (Henry Travers) can’t make headway, so he takes her to a brain specialist named Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent). A few tests and some worried looks later and we learn that Judith Traherne is suffering from a malignant brain tumor that requires immediate surgery.
The surgery is a success in that Judith survives, but not a success in the removal of the tumor. It’s assured by every doctor who examines the results that Judith’s tumor will return and will be fatal within the year, albeit without much in the way of symptoms or complications. The general consensus is that she’ll experience blindness shortly (as in hours) before the end finally comes. Steele and the others decide that the best course of action is not to tell her that her doom is impending. All of this is made much more complicated by the fact that Judith has fallen for her doctor and he reciprocates her feelings. She discovers her eventual prognosis, though and instantly rebels against her doctor and everyone else, deciding to shove as much life in her final few months as she can.
Toss in drunken playboy Alec (Ronald Reagan) and horse trainer Michael O’Leary (Humphrey Bogart) who has yearned after Judith from afar since he met her and you’ve got quite the tragic film. There’s a lot going on in the running time. In a sense, it’s almost as if the film tries to cram in as much life into its 104 minutes as Judith tries to cram into her final months of life.
There are a number of things that work both for and against the film here. The best part of the film is unquestionably Bette Davis. This is one of her better performances in a career filled with them. There are moments where the overacting is still reminiscent of the age, but it’s almost forgivable coming from Davis because there are also moments of real, genuine pathos here. She gets better as the film goes on. Initially, when she’s the headstrong Judith who doesn’t want to go to the doctor, it’s too much. When she comes to realize her death is inevitable, her mania becomes realistic and completely believable.
As much as this feels strange to say, I think this is the first film I’ve seen with Ronald Reagan. He makes an interesting drunk and plays the role pretty well. I’m mildly surprised at how high his voice is.
The weaker moments come, surprisingly, from Humphrey Bogart. I’m a fan of his, but he can’t hold an accent worth a damn. He’s much more at his best when he’s just talking the way he talked instead of trying to come across sounding like he was born and raised in Ireland. I didn’t realize he was even attempting an accent until his final major scene when it comes across in a couple of lines and just as suddenly vanishes. I also don’t buy George Brent as a romantic lead. I know the little mustache was in vogue, but it doesn’t look right on his face. I’m having difficulty putting my finger on exactly what doesn’t work about it. I think it’s that he always seems to look out of his depth no matter what is going on on screen.
But all of that is okay, because this isn’t about George Brent or Humphrey Bogart, but about Bette Davis and what she could do with a role. While she didn’t win the Oscar, she unquestionably deserved the nomination, and she’s the single reason that this was nominated for Best Picture. For me, the best part of this is seeing Bette Davis in the last half hour, trying to simplify her life and living only for what is most important. It’s so against how I tend to think of her, and shows more than anything else that she was a woman of enormous talents.
If you have an eye for the classics, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Dark Victory. Just have a hankie or five ready.
Why to watch Dark Victory: You shouldn’t pass up a chance to see Bette Davis at her best.
Why not to watch: Three hankies don’t cover it.
I got myself a boxset of Bette Davis movies and this was one of them. In fact it was the best of the lot. The boxset made me less of a fan I am afraid, but Dark Victory was a highlight. You are right, in the second half when she tune down the diva she gets so much better. Reagan was a surprise too. Still think it is weird to see him as an actor.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to know what other films are in the collection. I guess I've been fortunate in that the Davis films I've seen are at least pretty good.
DeleteI think this might be the first Reagan film I've seen, or at least the first time I've noticed him as an actor. He's not bad in this--he plays an interesting drunk guy.
The boxset includes Now Voyager (the reason for buying it), Mr. Skeffington (allright), The Letter (awful) and Dark Victory.
DeleteWow...I genuinely loved Now, Voyager so evidently we'll differ on that one.
DeleteI might have trouble sitting through this one. Watching Mary McDonnell as President Laura Roslin on "Battlestar Galactica," fading away from her cancer, was hard enough. From what you describe of this movie, the "death in one year" diagnosis sounds a lot like glioblastoma multiforme, and blindness is certainly one possible side effect of tumor growth, as GBM tends to follow neural tissue aggressively, even into a person's spinal cord in some cases.
ReplyDeleteDavis's character's initial surgery would be called a "debulking" nowadays (don't know whether the 1939 film uses that term); it's a stopgap measure that normally removes about 70-90% of the cancerous mass. Because GBM is "fuzzy" around the edges, the tumor can never be completely excised without damage to healthy brain tissue, so radio- and chemotherapy are the next steps, followed by more extreme second-line therapy as resistant tumors begin to blossom. Loss of cognitive function is usually a result of debulking—something that the Kennedy family tried to hide, I think, for reasons of privacy and dignity. (Ted Kennedy was within the GBM prognosis window: he lasted about 14 months after diagnosis. The average life expectancy is 11-13 months.) Was Davis's character cognitively impaired, post-op?
Anyway, we can probably add "medical accuracy, more or less" to your "Why to watch" list of reasons... although, for me, that might be more of a "Why NOT to watch" reason.
In truth, I didn't go into the medical details here because there wasn't a vast amount of medical information given. I've the feeling that what she was ultimately diagnosed with was similiar to glioblastoma multiforme, although it lived under another name in the film.
DeleteThe actual diagnosis of her condition was absolutely no symptoms and no cognitive impairment until blindness hours before the actual end. Dr. Steele in the film is initially convinced he can get the whole tumor in the surgery; that may be accurate and simply a factor of this taking place in 1939 with a 1939 diagnosis. In many ways, she has what Roger Ebert called "Ali MacGraw disease" from her role in Love Story--the only symptom is that the victim becomes more and more beautiful until she eventually succumbs.
If you're looking for interesting Reagan performances on screen, check out the 1964 Don Siegel version of The Killers. It's interesting to see him play a heavy and smack around Angie Dickinson.
ReplyDeleteI had pretty much the same reaction to Dark Victory as you did. I'm not a big Davis fan but when she is on top of her game, as she is here, she can't be beat. I, too, like her best in the last part of the film when she isn't so tough.
ReplyDelete@Chris--That's a film I've been interested in seeing. I'll check it out when I can, since one of the libraries I use has a copy.
Delete@Marie--Yep. It's when her guard is down in this that she's at her best. It's one of the reasons I love Now, Voyager as much as I do because it shows such a different side of her.
I agree this is one of Davis' better performances. I had a big problem with them not telling her the diagnosis, but this was common in films of the time in order to create suspense and tragedy. Despite that the movie did get to me by the end of it. I agree this a good film in a year filled with them.
ReplyDeleteRight--I didn't talk about that much in the review, but I agree that the hiding of her diagnosis seemed like an artifact of when this was made, more or less.
DeleteThat sort of thing still happens in Korea, and in terms of drama, yes—it causes plenty of unnecessary drama and heartache. Communication breakdowns in the context of terminal illness are a huge problem. Korean medical professionals need to be more forthright.
ReplyDeleteI'll defer to your greater experience.
DeleteHowever, it reminds me of the scene where the old man receives his diagnosis in Ikiru. He learns before this that the doctors will always give a diagnosis of something like dyspepsia when it's actually stomach cancer (which is, of course, what he has). The following scene is both tragic and comic--he's diagnosed with something incredibly trivial, which makes him terribly depressed because he knows that means he's about to die.
I know you prefer her work in Now, Voyager which I think is one of her best too but this is my favorite Bette Davis performance.
ReplyDeleteI think her bigness at the beginning was a deliberate choice on her part to show the hedonistic directionless life that Judith was living at that point and her hyperactivity was part of her effort to distract herself from the fact she had no real purpose. It also gave her later sereneness more of an impact. She's incredible in the last portion of the picture but she has another beautiful moment, matched by Geraldine Fitzgerald, when she returns from the stables and her companion Ann comes in to check on her. She's finally come to some kind of terms with her fate and wonders if she'd be wrong to bring it about, shocking in itself in a post code film, she's full of muted, quiet resignation. From that point on her work is gentle and full of depth but I get a kick from the first part when Judith is flip and saucy, as she is in the initial meeting with Brent "Vermont? You mean that pinched up little state on the wrong side of New York? What do you plan to do there between yawns?" And when she's in different emotional states, her restaurant confrontation with the doctor and Ann is great.
I can relate to your puzzlement about George Brent being a romantic lead. He's rather bland and I've never seen him as much of a stud, though apparently behind the scenes he was quite the ladies man with five wives-two of whom were Ruth Chatterton and Ann Sheridan-and numerous affairs, but I think that's part of the reason he was such a popular leading man in his day. His sort of stolid dependability was perfect for the high powered female stars of the day who could just plow right over him while carrying their films. He could be a facile comic actor as he was in Honeymoon for Three, Snowed Under and Out of the Blue but I've only seen him give one dramatic performance of any real weight in The Rains Came.
As far as Reagan my personal feelings, which are negative, about him aside I've never thought much of him as an actor. He actually shares a similar screen presence with Brent-he's almost always adequate but little more. Here though as the coded gay best friend Alec he makes a better showing than usual, maybe because of the brevity of the role, but he hits all the proper notes in his scenes.
Your impression of Bogart in the film matched his own. Not yet a star and being a contractee he was forced to do the role, a ridiculous decision on the studio's part when they had the much more suitable Patric Knowles on their rolls at the same time, and he supposedly always cringed when his part in the film was mentioned feeling that it was a blemish on a thing of beauty.
I've seen the two remakes of this, one with Susan Hayward called Stolen Hours and a TV redo under the original title with Elizabeth Montgomery (and Anthony Hopkins in the doctor role) and as much as I love both of those ladies neither version comes close to being as affecting as this one.
Now, Voyager is my favorite Davis performance, but I don't think it's a stretch to put Dark Victory in my top five and probably my top three. She is absolutely the main reason this film is worth the time, and it's the sort of film that could easily turn someone into a Bette Davis fan. For the record, the other three would be Jezebel, All About Eve and probably What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in the fifth spot.
DeleteI don't have a great deal of positive things to say about Reagan in general, either, but this was my first film of his that I know of--he's not bad in this. As you say, it might well be the brevity of the role, but I thought he was pretty effective.
As for Bogart, he's completely miscast. It's such a shame, too, because this would've been a nice little role for a solid character actor. Yes, Bogart was more or less a character actor at the time, but there were plenty of other people who couldn've handled this much more ably. It's weird to say that of Bogie, but this was simply not a good role for him.
I think I'll avoid the remakes. I can't imagine this getting any better than the version we have here.
Yea there's no real need to make seeing the remakes any sort of priority. Both are professionally made and both actresses give good performances, plus in Susan Hayward's case there is the sad irony of the fact that she was struck down by a brain tumor in real life, but neither film matches this one's emotional depth.
ReplyDeleteBy the way this was Bette Davis's personal favorite of all her films.