Cast: Masahiro Motoki, Tsutomu Yamazaki

Director: Yojiro Takita

Screenplay: Kundo Koyama

Running time: 2 hrs 10 mins

Genre: Drama/Foreign



CRITIQUE:


When the unknown, unseen and unheard of Japanese drama Departures clamped down on last season’s Oscar Best Foreign Film, elbowing out the superb docu-animated Waltz with Bashir and Palme D’Or winner The Class, almost everyone had their eyebrows raised – all except Yojiro Takita who received the award with a rather humbled speech, in a gibberish Japanese-accented English that amused the American audience. Those who doubt its triumph can carry on doubting. Those who have seen Departures, consider yourself fortunate. This fascinating, wonderful, elegiac film about death and the art of sending-off, Japanese style, is so far 2009’s most satisfying and moving film. For a movie that swims the undercurrents of morbid subject matters (death, dying, encoffinment), it manages to teeter between lightness and the deep and profound. See the film’s opening sequence; amateur encoffiner Kobayashi prepares the body of a girl only to find the humour in the most morbid and gloomy of scenes. This is something that we somehow understand in the Japanese culture and how they handle the dead. Living people become easily put-off by such job, and the audience equally share the reaction of those that surround the central protagonist. But as we follow his tale and witness the procedure that unfolds, the fascination becomes engrossing, and even heartbreakingly poignant. The encoffinment scenes are the most remarkable to watch, Kobayashi and his boss performing the final acts of care and affection that the dead deserve, it’s almost like a performance to be in awe with, the precision is affecting, the tenderness is beautiful. Yet despite of the many departures that we witness in the film, this is a story of personal redemption, with Kobayashi learning the face the bitter truths of his past, his father’s absence for 30 years, and his acceptance of life’s most natural event, which is death. The characters around him are even well-observed: the loving wife, the wise boss, and the emotionally wounded secretary. That Oscar win is very much deserved.



VERDICT:

Departures has the gentility of a sonata but with the emotional force of a requiem. A film with a quiet, resonating power with a story told in an old-fashioned way, reminding us that death is not for the dead but for the living. A beautifully life-affirming work.



RATING: A+

Cast: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare

Director: Lars von Trier

Screenplay: Lars von Trier

Running time: 2 hrs 21 mins

Genre: Drama/Musical



CRITIQUE:


Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark is an odd beast. It is a musical, yet also an anti-musical at once. It bears a self-conscious knowledge of cinema, how the medium can blur the lines between the fantasy and reality, the limits of imagination and filmmaking itself. One of von Trier’s testament of the filmic movement Dogme 95 (which stipulates that cinematic works be shot in the rather rudimentary DV cameras, hence the home-video look), following Breaking the Waves and The Idiots, it works as both a critique and meditation of the Hollywood musicals where, in Björk’s Selma’s words, ‘nothing can go wrong’. But of course, in the projected reality of this film, if you’re a Czech immigrant in America, working in an aluminium sink factory (allusion to the kitchen-sink drama) and going blind, everything and anything can go wrong. What is more, if you have a child who suffers the same genetic disorder. This is the bleakest musical you’ll ever see in your life, with a touch of sepia tones, telling a story of a suffering woman robbed of her sight, her financial resources, which would secure her son’s surgery, and unjustly executed. There are moments of sheer genius here: musical setpieces stirred from Selma’s daydreams, where Björk’s eccentric music somehow makes sense in the context of Selma’s circumstances. The factory’s cacophony of drilling, mechanical noises somehow create a harmony of sounds. Standout scenes such as the sequence on the rail tracks where Selma heartrendingly sings her soul out that her eyes have seen enough; the aftermath of the murder where Selma waltzes with her victim, forgiving her, and the devastating rendition of The Sound of Music’s My Favourite Things in a prison cell – these are pure escapist sequences, literally used in the film as an excuse for Selma’s character to flee the harsh realities of her cruel world. Björk may have been remembered as the one that wore a swan-frocked ensemble at Oscars red carpet, but her performance her should never be underestimated. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, and Björk delivers here that’s beyond words. She declared that she will never act again. Consider it one of a kind.



VERDICT:

Bleak, chronically heartbreaking and devastatingly powerful, Dancer in the Dark is a matchless work from one of cinema’s distinctive voices. Lars von Trier has captured something here that transcends limitations of genre. A box of Kleenex is prescribed.



RATING: A

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French

Director: Henry Selick

Screenplay: Henry Selick

Running time: 1 hr 41 mins

Genre: Fantasy/Horror



CRITIQUE:


You may call stop-motion animation a twitchy thing – but you can never deny the persistence of its laboured beauty. Take away stop-motion animation, and you take away the otherworldliness of The Nightmare Before Christmas, the ingenuity of Wallace & Gromit and the dark bizarro atmospherics of The Corpse Bride. The same applies with Coraline; once you replace its storytelling medium with live-action or Pixar-esque digital wizardry, you remove its soul. That says enough for this film, a children’s fantasy-fable that is even too dark for Pixar’s usual taste. Coming from the brain of Neil Gaiman and rendered in impressive skills of Henry Selick of the oddball extraordinaire The Nightmare Before Christmas (only 5% of the world’s population knows that it wasn’t Tim Burton who directed it), Coraline brims with inventiveness and sheer labour of love that the visuals emit its relentless power. There are brilliant details here: the real world of the Pink Palace is all drab down, with greyish tones and morose backdrops, but in the Other world, colours are used to full extent – the perfect dining room, the vast theatre underground, the circus in the attic, and the magnificently built garden which resembles Coraline’s face from aerial view – heightening the magical elements in this strangely involving tale of a blasted, self-centred girl. The heroine, voiced to superb feistiness by Dakota Fanning, is unlike any other animated figures. Ignored by her parents, she embarks on a pokerfaced tour around the new house with grunts, groans and visibly emanating hatred to her couldn’t-care-less parents. When she discovers a door that leads to another world, the same exact world she lives in but only more perfect, we encounter an Alice in the Wonderland structure here, only darker and more ominous. This is Gaiman’s deliberate homage to Alice, as we familiar structures and figures here, the Other mother can be your Red Queen, the talking cat is obviously the grinning Cheshire. But there are more surprises here, and the horror lies within the perfection of life in this Other world that it is truly scary, having parents that acquiesce to your every whim rather submissively, with downstairs and upstairs tenants that entertain you, and a neighbour kid who always smile, which in return could have your eyeballs be replaced by buttons, like on a puppet. Teri Hatcher is a sly choice as the both the mother and Other mother’s voices; watch her transformation to the real spiderlike figure and her accent becomes devilish. Even British comediennes Jennifer an Saunders and Dawn French offers delight in their roles as aging actresses Mrs Spink and Forcible, respectively.



VERDICT:

A dark, beguiling twist on Alice in the Wonderland, Coraline is brimming with details, craft and sheer invention that would have children in awe and adults marvel, with a story that is even a critique to the genre it belongs: a cautionary tale of children with idealistic fantasies.




RATING: B+

Cast: Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson

Director: Jean-Marc Valée

Screenplay: Julian Fellowes

Running time: 1 hr 4o mins

Genre: Drama/Romance/Biopic



CRITIQUE:


The trouble with British costume dramas, especially starring the royals, is that despite of the vast palaces for sets and lavishly adorned costumes, there is very little room for stories to spread its wings and soar. The British history is festooned with monarchs, the repressed and radical ones, and its central conflicts usually loop around who beheaded whom, who slept with which, who controlled what. And there’s always the question between love and love for the nation. The Young Victoria, for all its sheer elegance, magnificently mounted cinematography and confidence in its execution, feels like a distant cousin to Elizabeth, Shekar Kapur’s first frolic with the strong-headed queen. HRH Victoria, who ruled Britannia the longest of all monarchs in history, spans an enormous amount of history that this film had to centre at a stage in the queen’s life: her rise to the throne and her undying love for Prince Albert. Yet with such deliberate cutback, the storytelling moves incredibly fast, the cross-cutting from one scene to another dizzying, that it feels like we’re watching a précis of the whole story. Canadian director Jean-Marc Valée (whose name sounds French) employs swift filmic techniques here, in vein to the French jump-cuts, but sadly a technique that does not quite harmonise. The film succeeds, meanwhile, in its tender moments where scenes are allowed to breath. This is a story of the gentle romance between Victoria and Albert, both children of guarded upbringing, who found freedom with each other. Rupert Friend gives a subtle performance as Albert, a proud yet forbearing figure, a wonderful foil to Emily Blunt’s spirited and loving Victoria. Blunt here erases that common image of the morose, black-clad Widow of Windsor and gives Victoria a sassy, sexy finesse; once a woman in love with her man and her nation.


VERDICT:

A gorgeously mounted costume drama that swathes a slapdash storytelling. All hail to Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend for saving The Young Victoria from being nondescript.



RATING: B

Cast: Bertile Guve, Pernilla Allwin

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman

Running time: 5 hrs 12 mins

Genre: Drama/Foreign Films



CRITIQUE:


At the mention of Ingmar Bergman’s name, it calls to mind three things: death, a chess game and seashore. He’s this auteur whose works encompasses big philosophical things in life, death, depression, crumbling relationships and bleak melancholia, making him perhaps Sweden’s greatest miserablist. But the twilight of his career as a filmmaker, he shows a bright side nonetheless present in this director’s life: Fanny and Alexander is an optimistic film. The seasonal changes are utilised as a framework to this magnum opus, divided into five acts, each beginning with running water – emblematic to the flow of life.


If you get easily butt-numbed by watching people gather, socialise and eat dinner for some apparent longueur, you might as well grab a pillow. You might wake up to find the ending credits. The scale of this film is so all-embracing that it runs for more than five hours, an impossible one-sitting event. But once seen, it is never forgotten. All of life is here. This tale of childhood centred on the two titular siblings, Fanny and Alexander, is almost like a wrapping to more contents within. This is a family drama, acutely observed as it is sharply written. Stories of mothers, fathers, grandmas, uncles, aunts, maids are all here, as we watch the eminent theatre clan of the Ekdahls experience life, death, disaster, sorrow, tragedy and the eventual reunion. Later it moves into Dickensian territory as the mother submits to wed the Bishop, to which this union would cause suffering to the children. Religion and philosophy become intriguing central themes that this film touches on, with a dash of mysticism and magic, as tales of fantasy turn out to be as crucial to Alexander as his outer reality is. Hence, this is Alexander’s film more than anybody else, played to precocious precision by Bertile Guve. His blank expression and caustic remarks harbour the innocence yet stubborn knowing of Alexander. His witnessing of the death of his father causes him to shirk at one corner, his hatred of the Bishop makes him rebel, and his fear of the dark makes him weep. All things a child must be allowed to do.


VERDICT:

A powerful and extraordinary work, Fanny and Alexander might be Ingmar Bergman’s most masterful evocation of childhood.



RATING: A+

Cast: Salvatore Cascio, Philip Noiret

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore

Screenplay: Giuseppe Tornatore

Running time: 2 hrs 45 mins

Genre: Drama/Foreign Films



CRITIQUE:


Giuseppe Tornatore’s vision of a homage to cinema has the elements that, if clumsily handled, might put cause this film to descend to utter mawkishness. He employs a flashback structure, old man recollects his past youth after a death of a hometown friend, and tries to evoke a portrait of childhood, a impoverished, fatherless one. If that does not paint a sentimental picture enough, then you’re probably bone dry, emotionally. However, it is this flashback structure to which Cinema Paradiso holds its uncompromising power. It has done the same miracles in Stand by Me and many other melodramatic films. But here, Tornatore makes sure there is a marriage of effective storytelling with a lush visual style. The camera glides, sweeps into the town square, moves along with the characters – almost accompanying the growing consciousness of the little hero Toto, his passion for cinema, and the lessons that he learn in real life. It is even poignant when this boy is aware that his father, a soldier sent to war, is never coming back. He adopts a patriarchal figure in local film reel operator Alfredo, and here the film soars. This childhood is as nostalgic as it can get, whimsical, funny and moving. And when the film later runs in the present, the funeral march and the destruction of the movie palladium, it is as much as a heart-wrenching moment to the audience, who have witnessed the village’s attachment to this medium of entertainment. And that final montage of Alfredo’s film negative clippings, cinema’s greatest moments are all pieced together creating an astounding, remarkable tugging of the heartstrings. This is one of Italy’s best made films up there with Bicycle Thieves.



VERDICT:

A nostalgic trip to childhood, a magnificent paean to innocence, friendship and love – Cinema Paradiso is a cinephile’s wetdream. Beautifully filmed, exquisitely performed and magically evoked. It’s also one of the greatest melodramas ever made, staying in the right side of sentimental.



RATING: A+

Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana

Director: J. J. Abrams

Screenplay: Alex Kurtzman

Running time: 2 hrs 7 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure



CRITIQUE:


Batman was revitalised. James Bond was on steroids. The likelihood of injecting one of the world’s longest running franchises a good dose of botox was a great one. Where every Hollywood franchise’s secret formula is the back-to-basics method, it was only natural Star Trek had its treatment. And only naturally, J. J. Abrams was the right man for the job. He might not be among Hollywood’s enormously bearded directors, but he sure is wearing specs, thick black-rimmed ones, and palpably emitting geekiness and boyish enthusiasm to put this film in the right magnitude of entertainment. For a Hollywood offering, it’s damn impressive. Kudos to the creator of Lost (although it now flipped, plot-wise), the über-feature Cloverfield and director of the underrated Mission Impossible III; it shows he had much respect to the Trek material, but still managed to imprint his own trademark touches.


One expects Star Trek to be implausible (there are logical flaws here, surprisingly - as to forgetting their teleporting-beam-machine to parachuting into another spacecraft for the sake of sheer maximum excitement), and its science-fiction elements can travel at warp speed. So is the thrill meter. The origin story here is capably handled; beginning from what must be one of the most memorable birthing moments in recent cinema to the rivalry between Kirk and Spock. Its sparked with humour, nifty one-liners, and sometimes familiar overtones, but Abrams quickly pull you away from familiarity and give you a stun-a-minute thrill-ride, with visuals so intricate, sound in full bombast, and jaw-dropping effects – that kind of cinema that still has the power to grip to your seats with your mouth almost wide open. The invigoration also comes from its young, vibrant cast who infuses a lot of freshness and wit to their characters: Pine is solid as Kirk and Quinto is a terrific inspired casting as Spock, providing an emotional anchor to his otherwise humanly detached half-blood. The beautiful Saldana (watch out Halle Berry!) as Uhura, Brit Simon Pegg as Scotty, Karl Urban fizzes as McCoy, and newcomer Yelchin as Russian front Chekhov, whose accents deliver fit-laughs in some scenes. Eric Bana’s villain Nero even sidesteps a one-dimensional enemy, with a motivation of revenge on his belt. This is clearly Star Trek for the new generation.



VERDICT:

Not the Star Trek you would expect, but only much better. This blockbuster-snapper is quite impressive: thrilling and satisfying. It’s an adrenaline-pumped space actioner without being daft or emotionally comatose.



RATING: A-

Cast: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Screenplay: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Running time: 2 hrs 19 mins

Genre: Dramas



CRITIQUE:


One could not perhaps fathom that this film, which holds the record for the most Oscar nominations in moviemaking history (14 nominations, only equalled by Titanic of recent memory), does not involve a sinking ship. The spectacle in All About Eve encompasses neither hanging-for-dear-life events nor melodrama in the size of Atlantic – but titans in the art of performance. This satirical tale of two stage actresses, one an established superstar and the other an amateur ingénue, has gone down to legendary parody and endless imitation of other films. Yet this has lost none of its glimmer. Ageless and immortally resonant, it remains a razor-sharp satirizing of celebrity showbusiness, both Broadway and even, to an extension, Hollywood.


Joseph L. Mankiewicz makes use of the Citizen Kane-esque flashback structure here, to no surprise as his brother has written the screenplay for Orson Welles’s film. It begins with Eve Harrington (an ingeniously measured performance by Anne Baxter), receiving an honorary Best Actress award with all smiles and glamour but then the camera cuts to four other people in the crowd: one is Margo Channing (played to superb perfection by Bette Davis), whose face harbours that of a lion waiting to pounce for its prey. The film rolls back to the origin of the state of affairs, from the Broadway stage which it all started. Call it one of cinema’s greatest bitchery, this is a show about a rivalry of two polar opposites. Baxter radiates silky charm and effortless grace in her Eve’s innocent facade that hides a savage animal that steals, cheats, and lies to claw her way to the top of the celebrity kingdom. But this is not Eve’s film. It is, rather, about Margo Channing, an aging superstar compelled to face her fading sparkle and the cruelty of the business. And this is Bette Davis’s film, arguably one of her greatest roles which rightly deserved an Oscar if not for Judy Holliday for portraying a dumb blonde in Born Yesterday. There is a haunting persona in Davis’s Channing that makes it her very own signature role; one of cinema’s obvious amalgamation of actor and character, and all the brilliant for it. Channing is of the spoilt, self-righteous, arrogant archetype, throwing tantrums as much as possible, screwing up dinner parties and spitting harbingers of doom, ‘Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night,’ with such savage wit and force – but it is in the quiet moments of Channing that is more magnificent to watch, as Davis eloquently peels layers of exterior panache to reveal a broken-down, self-deprecating woman. That scene in the car where she lays bare her inner self-awareness is what screen performance is all about.


VERDICT:

All About Eve is that rare thing in cinema, a gem that can withstand the test of time. This is one of Hollywood’s greatest celebrity-culture satires ever made. Perfectly composed, cleverly written with acid-tongue dialogues, impeccably directed and performed to astounding gravitas by Bette Davis.



RATING: A+

Cast: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Sam Rockwell, Matthew MacFadyen

Director: Ron Howard

Screenplay: Peter Morgan

Running time: 2 hrs 2 mins

Genre: Dramas



CRITIQUE:


From the précis of Frost/Nixon, a Peter Morgan-penned play-turned-screenplay, it seems like a tedious, talky film that revolves around a singular interview, and even more off-putting, about the Watergate scandal of the Nixonian America. Just who really wants to reiterate this material? Ron Howard does. And forget The Da Vinci Code historical spelunking – this is more riveting cinema, more thrilling than the sight of a ghastly-haired Tom Hanks solving religious puzzles. What might be his best work for ages, this is uncompromising even in his own standards, learning the devices and techniques that makes a rather gripping piece out of a quandary-ridden story. The secret here then is turning the famous interview into an intellectual boxing match, as Michael Sheen’s vainglorious Frost learns to douse out the blazing pride of Frank Langella’s Nixon. The two seats are opposite each other, but they are lit in a way a boxing rink does, and they are set in a verbal sparring, a match that explores the travesty of truth and lays bare the personalities hidden beneath the bravados. Kudos then for Morgan for giving the characters precisely sharp words to say. Those who appreciated The Queen’s savage-yet-subtle screenplay would find Frost/Nixon incredibly satisfying. This is served by Howard’s option to structure in a quasi-documentary mode, with actors playing real-life characters (an excellent supporting cast) opining to the camera in washed-out greys, and building up the tension with a quick verve of editing. That says it all, but the limelight really goes to its two star players: Michael Sheen, ever the spectacular Brit thespian who can embody any role with finesse, gives his Frost a ridiculous self-importance but of a measured depth as he learns his ways of journalism; and Frank Langella for more than just his sputtering, growling, tempestuous voice but providing Nixon a slight stoop and a wearied face. As the camera goes for the close-up, layers upon layers of paraded personalities are shed off, and what we see is a man weathered with guilt and defeat.



VERDICT:

Everybody knows who’s going to win the verbal sparring, as the forward-slash in Frost/Nixon illustrates it, but as Frost tilts toward Nixon, there’s a humanity that shows in this thrilling, engrossing political and intellectual boxing match.




RATING: A-

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine
Keener, Emily Watson

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman

Running time: 2 hrs 4 mins

Genre: Dramas



CRITIQUE:


You’ve got to hand it to Charlie Kaufman. Amid the whippersnappers of Hollywood screenplays that either involves sequels or more explosions, he squeezes out more creative juices and pen something original – if not weird. From the fantastic mind-trip of Being John Malkovich, the sibling frustrations of Adaptation to the heartbreaking assemblage of memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman might have just crafted his most bewildering work yet in Synecdoche, New York. English-arses would have known by now what ‘synecdoche’ means; a figure of speech that stands for a whole e.g. ‘wheels’ for a ‘car’. There is not a more apt title to name this film, as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s lonely playwright, along with hundreds of recruits and actors, recreates the locale of Schenectady, New York after winning a genius grant and abandoned by an equally unhappy wife Adele (Catherine Keener in effortless mode). Hoffman is incredible, bringing an intense, almost harrowing, portrait of loneliness, and his Caden is a masterwork; a writer who desire to infuse reality and brutal honesty to his play, copying real life in the hangar afterwards, so ambitiously driven to exactly photocopy details and fragments of day-to-day trivialities. From Shakespeare’s idiom ‘All the world’s a stage, and all are merely actors in it’, Caden’s intention to infuse his art with life begins to realise that his life, instead, imitates his art.


There are genius touches here: Caden hires an actor to imitate him, but then exposes his exterior flaws unbeknown to him; Hazel (Samantha Morton, subtle and well-cast), the box-office-attendant-turned-lover, is also acted by Tammy (a dismissive Emily Watson), creating doppelgangers, crisscrossing of relationships – all elements that makes life complex and confounding. Whilst all elements do not work (that burning house is just too bizarre and unnecessary to the plot), this is a maddening look into a man’s slow nightmare with illness, aging and eventually death waltzing into his existence. And also, it’s very sad and profound.


VERDICT:

Kaufman’s directorial debut may be a head-scratching, literally bewildering affair, but there’s no denying he remains to be one of America’s greatest purveyor of life’s eccentricities and wonders. Synecdoche, New York is far, very far from being stupid.



RATING: A-

Cast: Bette Davis, George Brent

Director: Edmund Goulding

Screenplay: Casey Robinson

Running time: 1 hr 46 mins

Genre: Dramas



CRITIQUE:


Who wants to see a dame go blind?” Jack L. Warner skepticises when perpetual-nagger Bette Davis pitched this film. What seemed to be a star vehicle for unabashed melodrama and three-hankie mourning movie, Davis pulls a magnificent performance as Judith, the increasingly blinding, dying rich heiress, whose illness was unbeknown to her, kept secret by her doctor (eventually husband) and best friend. She’s a free-spirited, high-flying glamour girl of New York – throwing parties as one does with confetti – but when she learns of her doomed destiny becomes an impulsive, self-piteous monster. See the scene in the restaurant where Davis skilfully handles a terrific scene, snatching a menu from a surprised waiter and barks ferociously, “I think I’ll have a large order of PROGONOSIS NEGATIVE!” But then she transforms into a compliant character, accepting her death as an old friend. It’s a wonderfully measured and observed performance, anchored in a film that’s an exercise in melodrama. This is probably one for the mums and nans out there.


VERDICT:

Davis is superb here in Dark Victory, sentimental enough but thankfully never gets mawkish.



RATING: B+

Cast: Bette Davis, Leslie Howard

Director: John Cromwell

Screenplay: Lester Cohen

Running time: 1 hr 23 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:


Before Of Human Bondage, Bette Davis was a star deprived of its sparkle. If not playing a supporting role, she was recycled by Warner Bros. to stereotypes in studio-factory gloss. In other words, unchallenging roles for an actor who was capable of so much more. A banter and loan of contract later, Davis transferred to RKO temporarily and played Mildred Rogers, a self-centred, self-destructive Cockney waitress-cum-tramp, in this London-set tale of unrequited love and human infallibility based on the famous W. Somerset Maugham’s novel. As though the stars were perfectly aligned, Davis’ career set off in the right pitch. And she is not even the film’s central character. It is Leslie Howard’s club-footed Philip Carey, a gentleman in love with painting and this particular waitress, whom he become solely attached to. Howard provides gentility to his role, a virtuously quite performance compared to Davis’ visceral one. Henceforth, she is spectacular as Rogers, bringing ferocity, unpredictability and tragedy to this scamp woman whose pursuit to happiness is a selfish one, both sex-and-booze addled. It is a shocking role for an era of conservatism. That final scene where she appears almost lifeless, Davis had reportedly done her own make-up to uglify herself. Nobody in Hollywood would have the right mind to play such character that is as capricious as any tramp, nor did any actor at that period would dare to deglamorise their image. But she did. Davis attracted controversy, and with this, the limelight was on. Even the Oscar snub caused a hellfire that she was considered a write-in ballot, an act which Oscars abolished nowadays. That said, here was a fearless actress who would later become one of Hollywood’s brightest and most illustrious stars. Ever.


VERDICT:

A quietly dignified act from Leslie Howard polarised by Bette Davis’ spectacular, breakthrough performance. This is a riveting drama, unmatched by the two remakes it spawned.



RATING: A-