The Letter

Only an unsatisfactory resolution keeps this period-piece melodrama from quasi-classic recommendation. It is oh-so-smoothly directed by William Wyler and stars Bette Davis near the top of her game, as a murdering bitch who successfully masquerades as a lacemaking bungalow-wife in colonial Singapore, a masterwork of sexual duplicity. Herbert Marshall as her blind but kind husband, and especially James Stephenson as her knowing but conflicted lawyer, rise to the grand dame’s level. Somerset Maugham’s play may be creaky and cynically imperialist, but apparently the ending was tacked-on to pass the censors. The dvd contains an alternate ending that still doesn’t work. If they’d framed this story properly, it would have hung as a prime portrait in the gallery of filmic femmes fatales. (1940, dvd, n.) *6*

Of the quasi-documentary What the (Bleep) Do We Know? (2004, dvd, n.) I can only respond, “Not much.” I found its desire to be mind-blowing to be mind-numbing, and I couldn’t bear to watch it through. The attempt to use quantum physics as a license to sell New Age nostrums was intellectually shoddy, whereas Richard Linklater’s Waking Life presents similar ideas more honestly and more amusingly.