I saw an incredable performance of Betty Davis in Dark Victory last night that I had recorded a while back because it had Bogart in it. I was also very much impressed with some guy I never heard of before called George Brent. Most reviewers state how wooden Brent was, but I would say Brent was very good and might even add Cooper like in his role as the doctor. I would say that if any classic movie fan ever states that an actor is "wooden" he would quickly go up to the top ranks with me. This was the worst part or acting I ever saw Bogart in a movie. I would say that Bogart and Ronald Reagan were the only low points in this movie for me. Well neither one these actors had very much screen time in this movie as the movie focused on Brent, Davis and her best friend. Bogart may have been in the movie a combined total of 10 minutes and Reagan was just in a part of the drinking buddy role and only saw him from time to time for a few seconds. This is a very sad movie, perhaps the saddest that I have watched but still had good enough of a story to overcome this sad story. Any other actress other than Betty Davis would have turned this into a unwatchable soap opera story but Davis was electrifying in the lead part. I am very much looking forward to the three movies she did with William Wyler who she did have an affair with and stated was the love of her life. I may be turning into a Betty Davis fan but would have to see some more of her movies to be sure. I don't think I would like her in her meaner roles though, which I am not sure but may be all the rest of her movies.
Dark Victory
1939 / 104 min.
Starring Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan
Cinematography Ernie Haller
Art Direction Robert Haas
Film Editor William Holmes
Original Music Max Steiner
Written by Casey Robinson from a play by George Emerson Brewer Jr. & Bertram Bloch
Produced by Hal B. Wallis
Directed by Edmund Gouldin
Plot contains Spoilers:
When Judith Traherne, a gay, irrepressible member of the Long Island horsey set begins to suffer from chronic headaches, her family physician, Dr. Parsons, insists that she see Dr. Frederick Steele, a brilliant young brain surgeon. Judith arrives at Steele's office on the day that he is to retire from surgery because of the death of one of his patients, but, intrigued by Judith's symptoms and charmed by her spirit, he postpones his retirement and takes her case. After performing delicate brain surgery on Judith, Steele discovers that her tumor is malignant and that she has only ten months to live. Her doctors decide to hide the grim truth from Judith, but Steele is unable to coneal the facts from her best friend, Ann King. After her recovery from surgery, Judith and Steele fall in love and plan to be married. While packing for their move to Vermont, Judith accidentally comes across her case history file and learns of her hopeless prognosis. Angered at Steele and Ann's betrayal, Judith spurns Steele and begins a frivolous pursuit of pleasure, hiding her heartbreak with deceitful gaiety. When Steele admonishes her to find peace so that she can meet death beautifully and finely, however, Judith realizes that she must extract from life a full measure of happiness in the few brief months she has left with the man she loves. She and Steele are married and decide to carry on as if an entire life stretched ahead of them, ignoring the shadow of death that is ever present. Then, one morning, death comes to Judith and she faces it with courage and dignity, thus winning a victory over the forces of darkness.
Here's a reviewer's review of the movie and dvd:
Along with Now, Voyager, Dark Victory has to be the quintessential film in the 'women's picture' subgenre. It's completely stylized to fit into a specific viewer fantasy for a specific time. Some of the details are almost laughably dated, but once one gets beyond the wish-fulfillment fantasy of a monied class pursuing its entitlements the emotions are true enough. Dark Victory dares to be about sickness and death in fairly direct terms; the average Dr. Kildare feature of the time is nothing but pseudo-medical nonsense.
True, Davis is afflicted with the original glamorous 'movie sickness,' the kind that can be predicted down to the final symptoms, yet leaves the victim free to be glamorous and find the correct noble postures to take on her way out. Yet, for dramatic truth at the character level Casey Robinson's intelligent script and Bette Davis' performance hit the nail on the head.
Synopsis:
(spoiler) Hard-drinking & headstrong Judith Traherne (Davis) jumps horses like a pro and lives a wild life of hunting, riding and partying on her New England estate. Loyal secretary Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is also her best friend, and together they take on the taunts of Judith's obstinate horse trainer, Michael O'Leary (Humphrey Bogart). But neurosurgeon Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent) postpones his retreat to do research in the country to attend to Judith's problem - migraines, blurred vision and loss of feeling. His operation buys her a few months of symptom-free living, but both he and Ann withhold the truth from Judith: Her prognosis is negative, and she's going to die.
In many ways Judith Traherne is a selfish pain. The entire world seems to revolve around her personal daybook and she treats everyone in her life as if they were contract players and she the star. She measures how important a party is by the number of dresses she throws on the floor before making a choice and is so dismissive to her friends, we're surprised anyone will associate with her. The hitch is that Bette Davis makes this impossible woman a likeable identification figure for practically every woman alive. The vibrant woman is flawed but eventually moves to a position of greater self-knowledge.
The opening stages of Judith's 'movie sickness' are fairly realistic. The neurological symptoms are obvious but the bovine Dr. Steele (eternal costar for powerful females George Brent) frequently tells people that he won't bother them with highly technical explanations. He complains about the mortality rate for brain surgery, which in 1939 must have been pretty dismal. After the operation, he has to watch as Judith blithely walks about believing she's cured when we know she's living on borrowed time. It's actually rather amusing, to see Brent staring at Davis as if her head were about to split open, like Dr. Frankenstein wondering when the stitches will start falling out of his latest monster.
This is one of those movies in which poignancy is created by withholding vital information from people. (Spoiler) Ann and the Doc conspire to let Judith think she's cured, so we get a dramatic reversal every few minutes. Davis waxes enthusiastic about her new lease on life, while Ann and the Doc shudder and look guilty. Then Judith gets the truth and goes on a wild bender which at first gives the impression that she's sleeping with every man she meets. At least, that's what the matrons think and what John Ridgeley makes a crack about until the good Doctor slugs him in the head. (Gee, nobody talks about Ridgeley's blood clot and subsequent horrible death due to the good doctor's powerful right hook.)
But it turns out that Judith has been a good girl after all. This is also the kind of movie where young handsome research doctors fall madly in love with their patients, and they go off to find peace together and learn simple rustic values - with a passel of servants to keep doing the work, of course. Judith barges into Doc's bio lab, ruining any experiment he might be trying to do, but the interruption is laughed off and in just a few weeks he cooks up a promising lead toward curing 57 varieties of human sickness, or whatever. If he were a good Frankenstein, he'd be finding a way to put Eleanor Roosevelt's brain in Judith Traherne's body.
It would all be dreck if it weren't for the conviction of Davis' performance. There's no denying that in her key vehicles, she's everything - the production doesn't support Davis, she holds up the whole show like a female Atlas. The (choose one) morbid/life-affirming ending is brilliant in its simplicity. Thanks to the incredibly accurate timetable of death, Judith is able to find dignity by facing the darkness all on her own. (spoiler spoiler) The most brilliant weepie touch is having Judith send hubby away ignorant that she's already blind and sinking fast - a zillion women probably debated whether that was indeed the right thing to do.
Among the actors designated to orbit The Star are Geraldine Fitzgerald, quietly concerned and a barometer for dramatic typhoons to come; Ronald Reagan's forgettable playboy and Humphrey Bogart's painful turn as a smart-talking Heathcliff of the tackle room. We can tell Davis is a desperate woman the way she leads him to make advances, and then pushes him away. Yeah, he's got the right hormones and she doesn't give a darn, but there are limits. I mean, he's on the payroll. He's not even in the Blue Book.
Dark Victory hits some things on the head. Judith's series of reactions (denial, rage, blame, depression, acceptance?) resemble the standard sequence psychologists would later associate with patients coming to terms with impending death. There's also something right about Judith's Earth Mother response to doom, even though the details are a bit corny. She's planting flowers, petting the dogs and bursting with Spring's joy, even on the way to the morgue. Davis makes the image worthy of the romantic poets, and not just a morbid irony.
Warners' DVD of Dark Victory looks good but not perfect. It's billed as a new restoration but the elements must be flawed because many scenes have a few errant light scratches - nothing critical, but enough to show the film's age. The sound is very good, with Max Steiner's score making a strong impact.
Film historians James Ursini and Paul Clinton provide an overview commentary with most of the known info on Davis at this point in time, along with insights and opinions about the contemporary attitudes toward death in movies and the film's treatment of medical industry - boy, those doctors have a lot of time to wait exclusively on Judith! The featurette is a bit choppy and uses film clips rather flippantly. As if running out of subject matter, a lot time is used to compare Dark Victory with the other big 1939 Oscar winners, showing several clips from Gone With the Wind. Dark Victory was enormously popular on its own.
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