This is a prime candidate for They-Don't-Make-Them-Like-That-Anymore nostalgists with several key ingredients present and accounted for; it was released in 1940, as close to the heart of the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood as makes no difference; it top-billed Bette Davis at the height of her fame and with not one but Two Oscars under her belt; it featured an exotic location - okay, it was shot on the Sound Stages and Backlot at Warners, but they specialized in creating illusions of exotica, remember Casablanca?; it was helmed by one Willie (Wyler) and adapted from the canon of another (Maugham) and it was a melodrama in the best sense of the word. Wyler sets the mood impeccably letting his camera explore the humid tropical night that could be anywhere South of Pago Pago then nailing it specifically with a shot of a rubber tree dripping its liquid gold into an applicable container. This image is more subtle than you might suppose because it is a visualisation of the first line of Cole Porter's great hymn to obsessive love 'like the drip, drip, drip of the raindrops ...' (Night And Day) and it leads us into a story of obsessive love whose strength is that nowhere are we SHOWN this affliction; where most movies would begin as this one does with Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) emptying all six chambers into a guy who was dead after the first shot and THEN treat us to a flashback showing just what led Davis to that ultimate step, here Wyler is content to let us IMAGINE the one-sided passion between Crosbie and Geoffrey Hammond. This is a world that Maugham made his own, where English expats feel naked in the tropics unless attired in full evening dress with a Pink Gin welded on to their hand. Poor Bart Marshall didn't fare too well with Davis; he was her (literal) long-suffering husband in Wyler's The Little Foxes and here he is the poor sap who she's been cuckolding - ironically, in a previous (1929) version of the same story Marshall played the victim, Geoffrey Hammond. On paper the acting honors should be Davis's by divine right but here she's given a run for her money by James Stephenson - who made only three more films, released the following year, before dying prematurely - and Gale Sondergaard who has the cards stacked against her by speaking only Malay and Chinese and is forced to rely on her face and eyes which luckily are the most expressive on display. Trivia buffs will relish the names Robert (Marshall) and Leslie (Davis) Crosbie though to be fair Leslie Townes (Bob) Hope had made only one 'Road' picture with Bing Crosby the previous year yet ironically it was The Road To SINGAPORE, and equally not too many people would have been aware of Bing's younger brother Bob (Robert) Crosby who led his own band. This is Davis at her considerable best and is a must-see.
Review of The Letter
