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DVD Dark Victory (Restored and Remastered Edition)
Critic Pauline Kael called this shamelessly enjoyable, vintage Bette Davis weepie a "kitsch classic," and time hasn't diminished its ability to give the tear ducts a good flushing. Davis plays a swinging socialite, living the fast life of booze, smokes, and--with the help of Humphrey Bogart as her Irish stableman--raising thoroughbred horses. When a brain tumor starts giving her headaches and eroding her vision, she falls in love with her surgeon (George Brent), who grows more determined than ever to cure her. Davis gives one of her most vibrant performances, and her costars also include Ronald Reagan and Geraldine Fitzgerald. The film received Oscar nominations for best picture, best actress, and for Max Steiner's score. --Jim Emerson
Review(s): DVD Dark Victory (Restored and Remastered Edition)
Excellent Movie starring Bette Davis
One who enjoys real acting talent will love this movie. Bette Davis shines as a woman who is goign to go blind and struggling with the remaining days of her life. They don't make movies like this anymore watch it and enjoy!
"I think I'll have a large order of...prognosis negative!"
Long Island socialite Judith Traherne, the central protagonist in Dark Victory is going to face certain death. She has a crippling and degenerative brain disease that will eventually cause her to go blind and then die. This "prognosis negative" may not seem like the most optimistic subject matter for a movie, but under the sensitive direction of Edmund Goulding, Dark Victory takes on a shocking resonance and it's messages about death and dying are no doubt as timeless and probably just as significant today.
Dark Victory is an embarrassment of riches, an unashamedly tearful melodrama that features an absolutely electrifying, compelling, tour de force, tear-jerking performance from Bette Davis as Judith Traherne. Davis is in top form here, playing the doomed socialite with a neurotic, disturbed, and formidable intensity; she encapsulates the screen being as redoubtable as ever, with Judith insisting on her dignity even as a grave illness she seems to have beaten returns with an unbeatable vengeance.
Plagued by eye trouble, severe headaches, and a numbness in her arm, Judith is encouraged to meet with renowned doctor and brain surgeon Frederick Steele (George Brent). Judith knows deep down that something is terribly wrong, but she's a feisty strong-willed young woman who believes in just getting on with life. Consequently, she has slipped into a state of perpetual denial. Once Dr. Steele forces her to face the truth about her illness, Judith begins to fall in love with the handsome and dedicated doctor, admiring his affable and sensitive ways.
Surgery is obviously the only option, and at first, things seem to go well, but her crippling disease eventually comes back to haunt her and she's given only months to live. Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Judith's secretary and best friend, conspires with Frederick to keep the seriousness of Judith's her illness from her. They both do it, not out of spite or selfishness, but out of a gesture of love, and a desire to see Judith happy in her remaining months.
Judith gravitates between a whimsical carefree attitude towards her plight and a kind of stoic concern that things will be eventually work out all right for her. She friskily wrangles with her beloved doggies while still in bed, then bounces into the day in her silk pantsuit pajamas, all the while exchanging familiar niceties. It isn't until she learns the deadly ramifications of her illness that she starts to go off the rails, boozing with the playboys, smoking too many cigarettes, and soliciting the attentions of a smitten proletarian stable hand (Humphrey Bogart).
Dark Victory, for all it's foreboding and depressing themes, is actually quite uplifting and is also deftly paced and smartly energetic. Judith gets a new lease on life when she falls in love with Frederick and even though certain death draws near, nothing can stop her from continuing her savvy business deals, keeping prospective suitor Ronald Reagan on drunken hand, and leaping atop a galloping steed. Mawkish sentimentality, the hairpin turns of the plot, and even the not-so-subtle changes of heart by the central characters, never bog down the film or make the story too heavy-handed and overly maudlin.
Dark Victory ended up being one of Bette's biggest box office hits, and one can easily see why. This is a towering and commanding performance of unabashed melodrama and one of the most definitive pictures of her long and distinguished career. You never quite get used to seeing Bette this way, and you wish she'd been given even more chances to shine and play such a complex, intricate, and nuanced character as Judith Traherne. Mike Leonard July 05.
"I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative!"
You can see why this was Bette Davis's favorite film she did for Warner's: as a impetuous Long Island socialite dying from a brain tumor, she gets to run a real gamut of emotional states, from defensive nerviness to terror to giddy elation to fury and finally to the kind of noble self-sacrificing glamor Davis adored. And she IS splendid in the part--the film is worth seeing if only as a kind of astonishing catalogue of her techniques and styles (and she was probably the single most gifted star of the studio period). But this melodrama just isn't up to the standards of some of her later Warner's work, like THE LETTER and NOW, VOYAGER. The other actors, while competent, aren't even on the same planet as Davis in terms of their ability, and the script lets them all down. There's a subplot involving Humphrey Bogart as Davis's stablegroom--!--from Ireland--!!!--that goes nowhere, and the silly plot mechanisms of how Davis's rumor works (after her surgery, it is guaranteed to kill her but without any pain, and signalled only by a sudden dimming of vision that allows for some very maudlin final moments) are pretty laughable. But it's all worth it to see her great drunk scene singing along with a nightclub chanteuse when she learns she's doomed--the final extended close-up in this scene shows Davis at her most remarable.
Related DVD's Dark Victory (Restored and Remastered Edition)
In this 1942 melodrama, founded on the novel by Olivia Higgins Prouty (who also wrote the novel on which Stella Dallas was based), Bette Davis stars as Charlotte Vale, a dowdy, repressed woman who, overwhelmed by her domineering mother, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She finds help at a sanitarium from a kind psychiatrist (Claude Rains), who turns her into a beautiful, confident woman. As a new person, she takes a pleasure cruise, where she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid), an architect trapped in an unhappy marriage, saddled with a troubled daughter. The two fall in love, but, of course, the romance is doomed. Yet their paths cross on occasion, and, despite their feelings, Charlotte finds satisfaction in helping Jerry's depressed child. The film will seem familiar to new... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Paul Henreid Director(s): Irving Rapper DVD Release Date: Released the 13 November 2001 This item is currently not available.
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Bette Davis won her second Best Actress Oscar for her showcase role in this sumptuous southern costume melodrama, which was released in 1938 in response to the phenomenal popularity of Margaret Mitchell's novel Gone with the Wind. (It would take another full year for the famous film adaptation of Mitchell's novel to be released.) The setting is New Orleans in 1862, and Davis plays Julie, an egocentric southern belle who's used to getting her way. Henry Fonda plays the equally selfish banker who breaks off their engagement, prompting Julie to a variety of futile schemes to win him back. Gracefully directed by William Wyler, the film won Oscars for Davis and Fay Bainter (for Best Supporting Actress), and was nominated for Best Picture, Music Score, and Cinematography. Highlights... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Henry Fonda Director(s): William Wyler DVD Release Date: Released the 28 March 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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In the opening sequence of The Letter, director William Wyler delivers a primer on film directing: at a rubber plantation, in the tropical funk of a Malaysian night, the heavy stillness is suddenly broken by shots... and a woman with a gun, descending a staircase. She is the wife of the plantation owner, and the dead man is, ahem, not her husband. Holding the gun so securely is Bette Davis, in one of her greatest performances (her acting of a big revelation, late in the film, is still an astounding piece of emotional fluency). The story is taken from one of those sturdy Somerset Maugham tales that has proved itself in many versions, but this is the keeper; it was nominated for seven Oscars®, including best picture, director, and actress, winning none. Wyler's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Herbert Marshall - James Stephenson Director(s): William Wyler DVD Release Date: Released the 11 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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William Wyler and Bette Davis made their third and final collaboration their finest with this striking 1941 adaptation of Lillian Hellman's acidic play. The titular foxes are a particularly ravenous turn-of-the-century Southern moneyed clan, the Hubbards, and the most cunning of them all is sister Regina Giddens, the brilliant but ruthless woman played by Davis. In contrast to the manipulative Regina and her scheming brothers (Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid) is her guileless sister-in-law Birdie (Patricia Collinge in a delicately flighty performance) and her sickly, humanistic husband Horace (Herbert Marshall), whom she tolerates only for his money and position--until he stands in the way of a scheme that could bring her a fortune. Teresa Wright is the hope of the next generation as... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bette Davis - Herbert Marshall - Teresa Wright Director(s): William Wyler DVD Release Date: Released the 18 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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