Cast: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland

Director: Michael Curtiz

Screenplay: Maxwell Anderson

Running time: 1 hrs 46 mins

Genre: Dramas



CRITIQUE:


In the Bette Davis oeuvre, there are arguably a handful of not-so-great films only made worthy owing to her stellar performances. Such is the case of this historical drama The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. More pomp and pageantry than compelling substance, the histrionics beneath the tempestuous romance between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, is overtly familiar, the narrative lacklustre and the historical tension at the magnitude of a rather bum-numbing chess game. Michael Curtiz had to mount elaborate, sumptuous costumes and sets to mask the material’s lack of action. Technicolour cinematography is employed to vibrant effects and the scenes inside the Tower of London appear heightened, with Davis displaying a sensational portrayal of the Virgin Queen (since when did Davis give a bad performance?). Confined in enormous, ostensibly asphyxiating costumes, Davis had to make her acting mannerisms physical in her broad gestures, arm jolts and hand jitters. It is an impressively calculated performance, making the anxieties of the Queen externalised. Unafraid to look unsightly in part, she embodied a woman insecure of her appearance yet assured of power. Errol Flynn, much to Davis’s umbrage for Waner Bros. for letting Flynn play the role of Essex (she originally insisted on Laurence Olivier for the part), is surprisingly fitting as the ostentatious, naively ambitious Earl, his quicksilver charmer almost like a natural characteristic of the doomed historical persona. Historical inconsistencies aside, since cinema is no basis for accuracy study, one could only wish the drama is as affluent as its spectacle.