Dark Victory

I’m not saying we don’t have great movie actresses these days, but it’s nothing like the Thirties when female stars could sustain powerful careers even in a studio-dominated industry. Hepburn, Stanwyck, Garbo, and Davis may have been creatures of the system, but could carry films on the strength of their personae alone, as Bette Davis does here. In this shamelessly tear-jerking potboiler, she plays a heedless young heiress with a fatal brain disease, who marries her surgeon in order to learn how to die nobly and beautifully, and carries off the nonsense by sheer force of performance. Edmund Goulding’s direction and George Brent’s male lead are serviceable, but Humphrey Bogart as an Irish stablehand and Ronald Reagan as a drunken boy-toy are ludicrous in different ways, Warner contract players stuck in unsuitable roles before their destinies emerged. (1939, dvd, n.) *6*