Truly Dreadful Film

Great Film overall

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Critic James Agee, when reviewing the film in 1944, felt it was an overwrought story made to manipulate female moviegoers. Not sure if I agree with his assessment, but I do think Bette Davis is miscast as a gorgeous woman. It would have worked better with someone like Vivien Leigh or Gene Tierney-- any actress whose beauty was obvious and too striking to ignore. Or perhaps someone like Ingrid Bergman would have done an excellent job. And maybe in place of Rains, they could have reunited her with Boyer. Joan Fontaine (in Warners' remake of THE CONSTANT NYMPH a year earlier) might also have been acceptable.But Davis just does not work for me in this role. In NOW, VOYAGER she starts as an ugly duckling and we know that even despite her metamorphosis, she still has all those ugly insecurities inside-- that's sort of what bonds her to the young girl later on in the picture. However, in MR. SKEFFINGTON there is not supposed to be any doubt that she's a confident and alluring woman. I feel what we get here is play-acting, a vainglorious actress in a less- than-noble attempt to play a great screen siren. It's just not believable at all, no matter how much they dress her up.

On the surface "Mr. Skeffingnton" may look like nothing more than another novelettish women's picture from the 1940's, designed purely as a vehicle for its star, but look more closely and you can see that it is in fact one of the great films about growing old and about how some women will deceive themselves that they never will. It is a great tragic-comedy.Fanny Trellis is a silly, frivolous young woman while the men who flutter around her are sillier still. At first you might think there isn't much to this but when Fanny marries older and richer Job Skeffington, (a superb Claude Rains), the film deepens and darkens. Job is her brother's employer and Fanny marries Job to get her brother off the hook when he's caught with his fingers in the till. Fanny loves Job the way you might love a pet and treats him accordingly.The movie was directed by Vincent Sherman, not the most profound of film-makers but a consummate director of women's pictures and his star is Bette Davis, (who else?), at her very finest. The greatness of Davis' performance is that she grows into the role using all her trademark mannerisms to build Fanny's character. Near the end of the film there is a magnificent sequence, stunningly shot by Ernest Haller, where Fanny, alone in her mansion, suddenly realizes she is now an old woman and no longer attractive. This sequence is a triumph for director, DoP and star. Perhaps the film isn't quite a lost masterpiece; on the other hand, it's a film that transcends its genre. Perhaps I should go back and revisit the Sherman canon again.

This really is bad. Very bad. Fanny Skeffington (Davis) is considered the greatest beauty of her era. Once you stop laughing at that you will probably love the rest. It just gets worse and worse. The ending feels like a cross between Sunset Blvd and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Davis' high pitched monotone is her excuse for acting this time. Hey, Scarlett O'Hara was a horrible bitch, too but she was at least an interesting and sometimes lovable one. Fanny Skeffington is a bore. At the same time, every moment Rains has on screen is memorable. He had to see that his style of acting would steal this movie from a diva. At the same time, this long and rather slow moving movie is not boring. And it just keeps shocking us with its awfulness that we are on the edge of our seats to see what next horror awaits. It is definitely a freak show.

It's interesting that I quite liked this film the first time I saw (and reviewed) it, but on my second watching of the film somewhat disliked it. It has a lot of ingredients that would make me like it. It has Bette Davis, whom I think remains America's best female actress. It has Claude Rains, whom I almost always enjoy. It takes place in the era that I find can often be quite interesting. But I also think I know what I don't like about it. Movies are very often about a person or persons with a character flaw. And I often find that intriguing. But there is one character flaw that leaves me sort of flat -- being a person who is frivolous and petty, and that's what Bette Davis' character is throughout this film until literally the last 5 minutes. This film is a depiction of a very vain woman who, increasingly, doesn't realize that she is beginning to grow old and tries to remain a coquette. She wouldn't know what love and devotion is if she tripped over them...and she does in the man known as Mr. Skeffington, played brilliantly by Claude Rains. There is also a ne'er-do-well brother, whose function in the story was to facilitate Bette Davis marrying Skeffington to save her brother, who has swindled Skeffington out of tens of thousands of dollars, as well as providing a character who is mildly anti-semitic against Skeffington. Rarely has Bette Davis portrayed a character so easily despised as in this film...and for me that is the problem.Perhaps the most brilliant scene in the film is when Davis and a gangster she is having an affair with run into Rains and a woman she is having an affair with meet (not coincidentally) in a speakeasy. It is perhaps the one scene in the first half of the film where Davis' character is forced to look into a mirror and be appalled at the psychological image she sees. She and Rains divorce and he goes to Europe.And then, after a time, a severe case of diphtheria brings her age crashing down on her (shades of Baby Jane), something to which she cannot adjust. She has suddenly gone from vivacious to dowdy. But, Mr. Skeffington returns, a broken and blind man after having been tortured in a German concentration camp. Finally they are superficially perfect for each other.Both Rains and Davis were nominated for Academy Awards for this film; neither won. The character actors in supporting roles were all very good here. Of particular note -- Walter Abel...very recognizable, often underrated. He shines here.Also, a note about the sets. Quite lavish with fine detail, and the nightspots evolved over the decades very nicely. The black and white photography was exceptionally crisp.I always meant to purchase this for my DVD shelf, but now I don't want to. And here's why. Bette Davis' character was witch (different spelling!) in almost every frame of the movie (and it's a long movie -- 145 minutes), and then they expect us to accept her redemption in the last 5 minutes of the film. Maybe you can, but I can't. I don't even want to watch this film a third time.