Such a great opening to a movie: the sound of the rubber tree dripping, the plantation workers drowsing in hammocks. The shots ringing out, a man stumbling out onto the veranda of the big house, the camera panning in to a woman gunning down the man over and over again, closing in on Bette Davis' grim mask of a face. The moon hides behind a cloud, then reappears to starkly light the scene of the crime, exposing what she did. The woman coolly instructs her men to send for the police and her husband, then retires to her bedroom. The muffled sound of her sobbing through the door.
The film never really matches the taut, detailed perfection of this beginning, and there are too few twists and surprises from here on out, but it largely retains the sultry, adult and intelligent mood up until the ending, which, although apparently added by the Hayes Office for the sake of morality, reintroduces the full moon, once again witnessing - and this time covering up - a death, in a satisfying, circular way that the play's original ending would have lacked.
I was struck while watching this what a "Woman's Picture" it is, with Bette Davis in almost every scene, and her face and name the only things one sees on the film posters of the time. It seems strange to me such a fuss is being made over women-led films today when there have been countless great movies with "strong female leads" all the way back to the silent days. To believe the effluence being squeezed out of Hollywood today is any great groundbreaking leap forward for women, one would have to believe we live in a *more* sexist, segregated and oppressive era than the time of the Suffragettes a hundred years ago. Do we?
The difference between the two ages really is how back then the sexes were presented as equal but different, the men and women interacting with one other in mutual respect, and easy, familial love and affection, whereas the female-helmed films today are, almost without exception, antagonistic, confrontational and belittling in regard to men. The films back then were all about the story, and transporting the audience to another world. Now, they are but tools for political propaganda, no longer fit for purpose as either entertainment or art.
