Winter Meeting

This is a much more than your typical Bette Davis melodrama. Here, Davis plays a NYC poetess (Susan Grieve), who runs around in high social circles. One of her society friends, Stacy Grant (John Hoyt), invites her to dine with him as he entertains a navel hero, Slick Novak (Jim Davis, Jock Ewing from TV's Dallas) who is staying briefly in town. Stacy's idea was to make Susan his date while pairing Novak up with his secretary, Peggy Markham (Janis Paige). However, the evening doesn't go as planned, since Novak falls for Susan rather than Peggy and invites himself into Susan's house after the evening's entertainment.

In spite of Susan and Novak not hitting it off too well at first, they start to talk. They soon discover--after driving to Susan's family farm in CT--that they each have unresolved issues from their past. Susan's problem has to do with her dead father; how her mother had treated him which lead him to commit suicide.

Susan never forgave her mother for her cheapness. However, Novak's insistence that Susan had not tried to see her mother's side of the issue leaves Susan to question her own beliefs.

Novak's unresolved issue is spiritual in nature. Since he had been 16, he had always felt a strong need to enter the priesthood and had been discouraged from this by talking to a priest before entering the Navy.

The two help each other to resolve these some of these issues. In the end, this is not so much of a romantic story between a man and a woman as it is a mutual guidance about leading each other to spiritual epiphanies (or sudden moments of soulful clarity) of how to proceed with their lives.

P.S. This is one of those movies in which the two leading co-stars stare the last name: Davis & Davis.

I've seen this film a few times, and, perhaps because I'm an admirer of Miss Davis, I've always enjoyed it. Her performance of the long scene in the country house is really magnificent. Brilliant, thrilling acting, of the highest order. I enjoyed the dialogue very much, because, unlike many films, we really get to hear someone let out their innermost thoughts and it's very much like such a scene would be in real life. I think you have to be in the mood for this picture, and it will not strike everyone the same way - but it would be sad not to be able to identify or sympathize with characters trying to come to grips with sad facts in their past, because that's all of us, at one time or another.

The first thirty minutes may repel some.It's very talky ,it's filmed stage production style.This is a film which grows on you,you 've got to be patient for the "action" is minimal,and most amazing thing, in what is pure psychological drama ,there's not the easy way out : the flashbacks.Another director -it's the first film I've seen by Bretaigne Windust-would have at least enlivened things by introducing two very long flashbacks dealing with the two characters' past.Both have a secret to conceal .This is the very long conversation between them which reveals us that the poetess was demanding,idolizing her father,displaying no compassion for a mother who did not live up to her /their expectations;the soldier is a hero but someone told him something that has completely changed his way of seeing things .

People who expect a mushy romance ,a melodrama ,a love triangle (with the secretary) will be disappointed."Winter Meeting" shows the way to compassion for the others,be they hopeless.

"Winter Meeting" is a film that doesn't add anything to Bette Davis' distinguished career in the movies. The melodrama is undermined by a completely miscast Jim Davis, who makes the picture worse than it deserved to be. The part of Slick Novak should have gone to another actor that could have added a few more sparks to the movie.

As directed by Bretaigne Windust, "Winter Movie" is a dull attempt to bring the novel in which it's based to the screen. The adaptation leaves a lot to be desired.

The basic problem with the film is one of credibility. We don't believe, for one second, Slick Novak, the hero Navy lieutenant would even look at Susan Grieve at all, let alone be romantically involved with her. It's easy for us to understand why Susan would make a fool of herself in letting Slick come into her life. After all, plain Susan was no competition for gorgeous Peggy, who is all over Slick at the night club, and clearly wants him.

Stacy Grant, the man about town, kept reminding us of a subdued Waldo Lydecker, from "Laura", in the way he tries to get Susan under his influence. He wants to expose her to a society that she doesn't care to belong. This role was one of the ways Hollywood dealt with the subject of homosexuality in those days. Everyone knew about them, but the movie making people wanted to keep Stacy and his ilk in a permanent closet.

Bette Davis underplays Susan with mixed results. Obviously, Ms. Davis had no influence for getting out of this second class melodrama unworthy of her talent. Then again, one questions her wisdom in letting a light weight actor like Jim Davis play opposite her, when it's clear he is not in her league.

The wonderful John Hoyt makes the best out of Stacy Grant and Florence Bates, one of the best character actresses of that era, is fine as the housekeeper who knows a lot about the mistress of the house. Janis Paige, in all her beauty and youth, doesn't have much to do.

This is a film to be seen as a curiosity more than a Bette Davis signature vehicle.

Bette Davis and Jim Davis have a "Winter Meeting" in this 1948 film about a spinster poetess and a heroic soldier. Based on a novel, it's an odd choice for a film, as it concerns two people wrestling with their inner selves. Both of them are carrying baggage, and each tries to help the other. That kind of scenario doesn't lend itself to the big screen.

There is a Waldo Lydecker character, this time named Stacy Grant, played by John Hoyt. He's the classy closet homosexual full of wit and vinegar who first introduces Susan (Bette) to Slick (Jim Davis), though he has invited his secretary (Janis Paige) as Slick's date. A morose man who obviously doesn't feel much like a war hero, Slick is interested in Susan, and the two begin a romance. She takes him to her house in Connecticut, a place filled with bad memories for her. There, the two fall in love and each discovers what's really bothering the other.

This is a slow moving film filled with dialogue - the lines almost outnumber the cigarettes. We're not used to dialogue anymore - it doesn't leave enough time for the special effects. What's off-kilter in this movie is the direction and the inexperience of Jim Davis, who later would achieve great fame as Jock Ewing on "Dallas." People on this board have said Bette Davis cringed during their love scenes, why did she agree to have him as her co-star, etc. First of all, she was crazy about him as a person and wanted to help him in his career, though that never materialized. I think I remember reading he went to Korea or something and when he got back, she'd never heard of him, though he did have an autographed photo of her as proof that he knew her. Secondly, Bette Davis was not Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn liked to surround herself with the best of the best; Davis, as she grew older, became more insecure and eventually wanted people around her she could cow. She hadn't quite reached that stage yet in "Winter Meeting," but we can see the early signs. She was on her way out at Warners and wasn't given a strong director who really could have pulled this together.

Despite this, Davis gives a very restrained performance; she's excellent. The problem is, why would a returning soldier be interested in her when he has Janis Paige hanging all over him? It stretches credibility. Paige here looks like a cross between a young Jane Fonda and Teri Hatcher - she's gorgeous. Davis looks like the atypical 1940s spinster aka career woman - tailored clothes and severe haircut. Pre-code career women had so much more fun - they dated, they went to bed with men, and they looked good. Then somebody decided it wasn't moral, and all girls should be married, and if you aren't, you'll end up frustrated and wearing suits like Davis wears in this. One can understand a serious young man like Slick being attracted to Davis' intelligence, and if she had looked the way she looked later on in the film (apparently after they had sex), one could have bought it so much more easily.

"Winter Meeting" is worth seeing for a wonderful Davis performance and the thought-provoking character studies. Though awkward at times, it's nevertheless interesting, and one does care about both of the main characters. You can't say that about some of the films today.