Dark Victory is a prime example of what they used to call, somewhat dismissively, "women's pictures" or even "weepies." However, despite its sad ending, this film owes its success to the ferocity of the lead performance by Bette Davis, one of the greatest actresses ever to appear on film. Here she plays Judith Traherne, a young socialite from Long Island who has spent much of her life partying and hunting and spending her family’s money. She drinks and smokes (a lot), and she’s very involved with her horses and dogs. Her life changes dramatically, however, when she’s diagnosed with a brain tumor.
This is one of Davis’ most sympathetic roles, but don’t kid yourself into thinking she’s playing some sort of passive victim. She’s still bringing a great deal of toughness to the role. At the start of the movie, Judith begins experiencing frequent headaches and bouts of double vision (which the film kindly replicates for us so that we can experience them too), but it’s a fall from one of her horses that really alerts everyone to an issue. A subsequent fall down the stairs leads to a meeting with a specialist, a surgeon who has been planning to leave his practice in order to conduct more research on brain tumors. Their first meeting is a tense one, but it showcases the range of which Davis was capable.
Davis’ Judith falls in love with the surgeon (played by George Brent, her frequent co-star, who was in a lot of movies but never seemed to break out and become a huge star) and she eventually marries him. The doctor and her best friend, played by a very young Geraldine Fitzgerald, attempt to keep secret the fact that the surgery has not been successful, but anyone who has ever watched a Bette Davis film knows that she is destined to find out. No one can outsmart Davis for long; you can always see the calculations of her mind.
Here's what has always puzzled me about this film, though. I understand that HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) was passed in 1996, but surely doctors in previous eras were expected to keep the health information of their patients private and to tell patients all of the information they needed to make informed decisions about their health. Brent’s Dr. Steele, however, decides – with the help of Judith’s family doctor played by the always reliable Henry Travers – to withhold the results of her brain surgery. She’s going to die within ten months, but no one is going to tell her? He also tells her best friend/secretary, Ann (Fitzgerald), about Judith’s prognosis, and she’s not even a relative!
It's only when Judith sees her own medical report lying on a desk in the doctor’s office that she learns the truth: “prognosis negative.” Again, shouldn’t patient records be kept in a more secure location? By this point, she’s married to Dr. Steele, but she shouldn’t have such easy access to medical information, should she? She even gets to read in her case study the opinions of other doctors who concur with Steele’s diagnosis (and there are many of them). Maybe it was this kind of behavior that led to the passage of HIPAA? It certainly seems like a potential issue of malpractice.
Dark Victory is almost a textbook example of classical Hollywood filmmaking. All of the elements are there for a successful film: the script, the performances, the sets and costumes, the great score by Max Steiner, even the editing (note how often the film fades to black to move us from scene to scene, quite a chilling choice). I have seen this film a few times, and I've always been a fan of Bette Davis (naturally, as any film lover should be). It's always a pleasure being reacquainted with it. Even though you can figure out pretty quickly what's going to happen, you still feel a measure of (misguided?) hope. However, when you get to the last sequence, where Davis is trying to get her husband packed for a trip and out of the house quickly, the suspense that the filmmakers are able to create is almost excruciating. Watching Fitzgerald's face or the reaction of one of the bit players in the role of the maid Martha (Virginia Brissac) only adds to the emotional impact.
Fitzgerald, acting in her first film in the United States, had a great chemistry with Davis. Their rapport seems genuine, and her feelings at the potential death of her friend are clear and evident. Humphrey Bogart has a relatively small role as a stable master named Michael, who confesses his love for Judith, as if we haven’t figured this out by his looks at her throughout the film. He’s from a lower class, of course, and gets a great speech about how manly he is compared to her rich male friends. You can see he had star quality, but this is quite a distance from Rick in Casablanca or Charlie Allnut in The African Queen.
I wonder how different the film might have been had Ronald Reagan, who has a supporting part as one of Davis's drinking buddies, played the part of the doctor instead of George Brent. Brent was always a capable actor, but aside from surgical prowess, his character needs a strong measure of charisma as well, I think. Reagan, whose politics I never admired, at least had the charm and looks to keep your attention whenever he's on the screen. Brent tends to fade into the background a bit too much. Of course, that was always one of the dangers of acting with Bette Davis.
Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actress (Bette Davis), and Best Original Score
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