Bette Davis was always at her best when she played strong-willed women, and the role of Judith Traherne in Dark Victory was perfect casting. Judith is a hard-drinking, hard-partying socialite who learns that she has a brain tumor. At first, she refuses medical attention, but eventually she succumbs to the wishes of those around her, including her doctor, played by George Brent. It’s interesting to watch Davis as a young woman who realizes that she might die from her illness. She’s so good at fidgeting when she’s uncomfortable such as during her initial examination in the doctor’s office. You know she’s fearful and fragile under all of her bluster. After the surgery, Judith initially has a different personality; she is confident and cheerful and outgoing. However, discovering by accident that the tumor was inoperable and that she has very little time left to life, she reverts to her old ways of drinking. She’s hurt and angry after learning the truth, and she lashes out at people who are her friends and even at her now-husband, the doctor. By the way, Davis is particularly good at playing drunk. She doesn’t overplay it; she behaves the ways that drunks often do. The film’s emotional payoff happens after Judith comes to a place of acceptance. The final sequence of the film, after she’s learned that she’s going to die within a few hours, is heartbreaking to watch as Davis makes a series of choices for her reactions to her best friend and her husband. She’d already won two Academy Awards by this point, and no one was likely to take the honor away from Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind, but Davis gives another one of her unforgettable performances in Dark Victory.
Irene Dunne plays Terry McKay, a former nightclub singer who enjoys a fling with a handsome French playboy in Love Affair, and she’s witty and knowing and dear, qualities Dunne could bring to almost any role. She also displays a flair for fashion and sophistication in this film, so it’s no wonder that Charles Boyer’s Michel Marnay falls for her. Both of them are, naturally, involved in relationships with other people, but as we watch their romance bloom while they are on a journey by boat to the United States, we can sense how they are meant to be together. Terry may act very coy with Michel at times, but Dunne infuses a wry sense of humor (and that hearty laugh of hers) into the performance at just the right time to undercut any sense of hesitation we might have about believing that she loves him. When they arrive in America, they depart with plans to meet up six months later to see how they feel about each other after some distance apart. You don’t think a Hollywood romance can occur without obstacles, do you? Unfortunately, it’s Dunne’s Terry who suffers the most; she is struck by a car on her way to the Empire State Building for their rendezvous. She decides not to burden him with the news of her injuries, so he’s left to believe that she didn’t want to meet. Of course, whenever she thinks about their time together on board the ship, she gets rather wistful, so it’s unclear what exactly motivates her to let him think she’s abandoned him. The two lovers accidentally meet at the theater after another six months pass, and he comes to her apartment to visit her and learns of her paralysis. It’s the romantic ending you might have hoped for, but it does seem that the obstacles the film has placed between Terry and Michel are horribly unnecessary. If they truly feel this strongly about each other, wouldn’t they have been together even after her accident? No matter. Dunne makes their reunion a tender and emotionally satisfying ending to the film, and that’s really what we should care about.
Greta Garbo received her third and final Oscar nomination as the title character in Ninotchka. Watching her Nina Ivanovna Yakoshova, nicknamed “Ninotchka,” alter her facial gestures and body language and almost every aspect of her character as the film progresses is quite a marvel. This would be Garbo’s penultimate film, and she’s marvelous. At the start of the film, she’s so deadpan and matter of fact and seemingly emotionless that you can’t imagine that she’s going to fall in love with Melvyn Douglas’ Count Leon or anyone else, really. After all, she has only arrived in Paris from Russia to settle a matter of some royal jewelry that the Bolsheviks are trying to sell in order to raise money for needs back in their home country. However, Garbo delivers her lines perfectly, and she modulates her facial expressions to fit the plot’s development. When she breaks out into a laugh after Leon falls in a restaurant, it’s so shocking that it’s no wonder that MGM advertised the film with the tagline, “Garbo laughs.” She gets to do more than laugh, though. She starts to adjust her posture as she becomes more accustomed to Parisian customs; you can see her body relaxing. Her smile, that radiant smile, appears with greater frequency, and she conveys so naturally the progression of a woman’s emotions as she falls in love. One of the most moving and effective scenes occurs when Ninotchka has returned to Russia and is meeting with the three agents who failed to sell the jewelry quickly enough in Paris. They’re having a dinner at her (shared) place – four eggs made into an omelet – when a telegram arrives. Unfortunately, it’s been redacted because it comes from Leon in Paris. The disappointment on her face is heartbreaking. So few actors, male or female, could master the closeup the way Garbo did. She would never win a competitive Oscar, and she would retire from the screen just a couple of years after Ninotchka’s release. What a loss for the profession of acting!
From the moment that the image of Greer Garson’s lovely face emerges from a mist in the Alps, she becomes the heart of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Her Katherine is such a warm, gentle presence in the film, and she serves as a naturalistic counterpoint to her costar Robert Donat as the title character of Mr. Chipping. Interestingly, Garson’s character is only in the film for about 35 minutes or so, and that would normally be considered a supporting role instead of a leading role for a movie of this length, but it’s the way that her Kathy, in essence, uses her sweet and easy persuasion to take over so much of the life of Mr. Chips that makes this such a star turn for Garson. She’s charming all of the time, but Katherine can also be a bit brash and forward; she is a suffragette, after all, who’s taking a bike tour of the Alps when she meets her future husband on that misty mountainside. Everyone in the film who meets Kathy is charmed by her – her husband’s colleagues, his students, even the headmaster of the school –and it’s tough for us as audience members not to be similarly charmed by Garson in her first major film role. When Katherine dies in childbirth, her absence casts quite a pall on the rest of the film, and frankly, with only Donat to take up our time, the movie falls precipitously in interest.
Gone with the Wind clocks in at almost four hours, and it gives viewers a lot of time to watch Vivien Leigh deliver one of the greatest performances in film history. Her Scarlett O’Hara begins the film as a vain Southern belle more interested in making her prospective beau jealous, but she ends the film as a woman who’s suffered a great deal of loss and pain in her life while managing to maintain a sense of who she is. She’s flirtatious and lively and charming, but she’s also serious and calculating and tough. Scarlett has the intelligence to be successful in business, but she doesn’t have the opportunity as a woman to do so. Southern society at the time defined women like Scarlett in terms of the man they were attached to. We understand why she marries each of the three men Scarlett weds during the course of the film, and we also realize before she does that it’s truly Rhett Butler that she’s destined to love, not the rather bland and colorless Ashley Wilkes. The film allows us several great close-ups of Leigh’s face, and it’s especially effective at allowing us to see just how masterful Scarlett can be at manipulating men. The ending of Gone with the Wind tries to make it seem like the focus should be on Tara, the former plantation that was her home, and the land and her connection to it. However, I never think the film is about Tara. It’s about Scarlett and how she’s managed to find a way to survive through some of the most astonishing events any one person could have experienced. When she notes that “tomorrow is another day,” you recognize that this is not the end of what has already been an astonishing story of a woman’s life. Watching this film allows us to savor how well Leigh conveys so much of what has happened to that woman.
Oscar Winner: Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind
My Choice: You think I’m going to disagree with the
Academy on this? Leigh is so fantastic that it’s impossible to imagine any
other actress in this role. I realize that this is such a stacked category of
indelible performances, but Leigh has to be the obvious choice. If I were given
the option of choosing a runner-up, it would be Garbo for her delightful
comedic turn, but the Academy Awards don’t announce runners-up.
