Classic Films in Focus: THE LITTLE FOXES (1941)

The Little Foxes (1941) reunites stars Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall with director William Wyler after their collaboration the previous year in The Letter (1940), in which Davis had also played a morally bankrupt wife who wrecks Marshall's life. The original stage version of the play by Lillian Hellman had starred Tallulah Bankhead, who hailed from Alabama, where the story takes place around the turn of the last century. The movie version pulled in a whopping nine Oscar nominations, with Teresa Wright and Patricia Collinge actually pitted against each other for Best Supporting Actress, but the lack of any wins is more a testament to the year's embarrassment of cinematic riches than a reflection on the merits of this picture. Smart, sharp, and ruthless in its depiction of a truly awful trio of ambitious siblings, The Little Foxes is a must for Davis and Marshall fans.

Davis leads as the heartless Regina Giddens, who hopes to rake in riches by convincing her husband, Horace (Herbert Marshall), to go in with her two brothers (Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid) on a cotton mill scheme. When Horace refuses, his shifty nephew, Leo (Dan Duryea), steals valuable railroad bonds from Horace's safety deposit box to get enough money to proceed with the plan. The brothers also hope to consolidate the family's wealth by marrying Leo to Regina's innocent daughter, Alexandra (Teresa Wright), a plot strenuously resisted by Horace and Alexandra's unhappy aunt, Birdie (Patricia Collinge).

The Hubbard brothers and their sister make most dysfunctional families look like the Brady Bunch. They share a Shakespearean hunger for importance and wealth, and destruction falls on anyone who stands in their way. Eldest brother Ben (Dingle) hides his grasping avarice beneath a veneer of Southern geniality, while second son Oscar (Reid) berates and belittles his alcoholic wife after marrying her for her family's name and property. Shut out from the Hubbard inheritance because of her sex, Regina competes with her brothers by manipulating her ailing husband and pushing relentlessly for the largest share in the cotton mill scheme. Davis, Dingle, and Reid are at their best when they get to be the worst; they really send chills up the spine with their cold eyes and their infinite greed. Davis in particular freezes the heart when Regina watches Horace succumb to a heart attack without lifting a finger to help him. It's murder by sitting still, but the look on Davis' face speaks volumes. Dan Duryea makes a perfect heir to the Hubbards' black nature as the corrupt but spineless Leo; if he lacks the grandeur of his elders, he is, at least, everything that they deserve.

The siblings behave so badly that the movie would be unbearable without the relief provided by the sympathetic characters, particularly Herbert Marshall's dying Horace and Teresa Wright as his devoted daughter. Wright's Alexandra is the dynamic character of the narrative; her elders have already made the decisions that dictate their fates, but she has the opportunity to reject their choices and strike out for a life of her own. She has several key figures to help her, including her father and her playful love interest, David (Richard Carlson), but the good women around her also show her the way. Her Aunt Birdie serves as a tragic object lesson in the dangers of letting the Hubbards control her, and Patricia Collinge plays the character beautifully, so that we see her failings but forgive them because of her sweet nature and her suffering. More importantly, Alexandra has a true mother figure in Addie, played by Jessie Grayson with quiet fortitude and unshakable poise. She might be a paid household servant, but Addie makes the single greatest difference in Alexandra's life, having obviously raised her to be a generous, sincere person in spite of her mother and uncles. The most moving scene in the film unites all of these good characters at a table outside the house, where they form a kind of quiet resistance to the devouring evil of Regina and her brothers. The elders might not be able to save themselves, but they support one another and do their best to protect Alexandra, who is the heir to their humanity just as Leo is the heir to the Hubbards' depravity. Worlds collide when Alexandra eventually stands up to Regina, especially in the movie's powerful final scenes.

Bette Davis already had two Oscars by the time she got her nomination for The Little Foxes. She would end her career with eleven nominations in all, including wins for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938), both of which were also directed by William Wyler. Wyler won his own Oscars for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959). For more of Herbert Marshall, see Trouble in Paradise (1932), The Enchanted Cottage (1945), and Angel Face (1952). Don't miss Teresa Wright and Patricia Collinge playing daughter and mother in Shadow of a Doubt (1943); Wright, who also appears in The Best Years of Our Lives, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Mrs. Miniver. If you want to know how the Hubbards got to be such a rotten crowd, you might track down the prequel, Another Part of the Forest (1948), in which Dan Duryea plays the younger Oscar and Ann Blyth plays Regina. Other films adapted from Lillian Hellman's plays include Watch on the Rhine (1943) and The Children's Hour (1961).

Classic Films in Focus: ANGEL FACE (1952)

Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons play a deadly game of dysfunctional romance in Otto Preminger's Angel Face (1952), which features a particularly tragic femme fatale caught in the undertow of her own insanity. Everyone around her is in danger of being dragged down, as well, but Mitchum's protagonist is foolhardy enough to see the danger signs and still dive in. Angel Face benefits tremendously from Preminger's direction and the performances of the two stars, but the picture ultimately belongs to Simmons, whose sweet face conceals the murderous disorder of her obsessive mind.

Mitchum stars as Frank, an ambulance driver who answers a call at the Tremayne house only to become drawn into the family's affairs by Diane (Jean Simmons), a beautiful but manipulative young woman who hates her wealthy stepmother (Barbara O'Neil) as much as she adores her novelist father (Herbert Marshall). Frank blows off his steady girl, Mary (Mona Freeman), in order to spend time with Diane, even though he realizes that he's setting himself up for trouble. When Diane is accused of murder, Frank finds his own life on the line, as well, and he's forced to stick with her in spite of his desire to break things off and go back to Mary.

Mitchum, of course, was made for film noir, but this performance sees him in a more passive role. Frank lets Diane lead him around by the nose until it's far too late to walk out, even though he eventually gets fed up enough to try. The actor has a unique ability to make us believe how a smart guy might do a series of very stupid things. "Never be the innocent bystander," Frank says, "that's the guy that always gets hurt." He doesn't take his own advice. Simmons is a marvel as the siren who lures Frank on toward disaster; she isn't intentionally bad so much as she is utterly deranged, a broken doll with a little girl's face and a jealous killer's heart. Like Ellen Berent in Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Annie Laurie Starr in Gun Crazy (1950), Diane is capable of love, but it's a passionate, possessive storm of emotion that destroys the ones it adores. Diane loves her father, but she can't tolerate her stepmother's intrusion into their lives, and her desire to get rid of Catherine Tremayne takes her well beyond the point of no return. She loves Frank, even though she knows that he never stops thinking about returning to Mary. Eventually she realizes that there's only one way to make sure that he never walks out.

The supporting performances are all solid, with Herbert Marshall especially sympathetic and rather pitiable as the novelist whose marriage into money has ruined him for his art. We can see why Diane worships her father, but we also recognize the essential weakness of his nature. Barbara O'Neil does an excellent job with the tough role of Diane's stepmother. Diane, resentful and childish, wants to cast her as a fairy tale villain, while O'Neil shows us the extent to which Diane's vision is self-deluding. Mona Freeman has some very good scenes with Mitchum as the justly offended girlfriend, but her best moment is the luncheon confrontation with Diane, where Mary proves that she's not going to play Diane's duplicitous game. Leon Ames is polished and rather disturbing as the attorney who defends Diane, and Jim Backus turns up for a few energetic scenes on behalf of the prosecution.

Otto Preminger directed other noir films, including Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1945), and Whirlpool (1949); he also directed Mitchum again in the Western, River of No Return (1954). See more of the magnificent Mitchum in Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Cape Fear (1962). You'll find Jean Simmons in Great Expectations (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), and Spartacus (1960). Barbara O'Neil is best remembered today for playing Scarlett O'Hara's mother in Gone with the Wind (1939), while Herbert Marshall is known for Foreign Correspondent (1940) and The Letter (1940).

Classic Films in Focus: THE FLY (1958)

The original 1958 version of The Fly was such a hit that it spawned multiple sequels and the well-known 1986 remake with Jeff Goldblum, but it’s actually a lot less horrific than first-time viewers might assume. That famous ending, with the hideous man-fly screaming for help, is certainly over-the-top horror hysteria, but the rest of the picture is more inclined to take itself seriously. At its heart, The Fly is a love story about a young couple whose happiness is shattered by the husband’s dangerous pursuit of science. It works, too, thanks mostly to the performances of David Hedison and Patricia Owens as the lovers caught in fate’s insidious web, although horror fans will also appreciate the presence of genre icon Vincent Price as the doomed inventor’s brother.

David Hedison (credited as Al Hedison) stars as Andre Delambre, a brilliant scientist who invents a matter transmitting device in his basement lab. His experiments go horribly wrong when he tests the invention on himself and unwittingly transports a fly at the same time. Hideously mutated and rapidly losing control over his insect parts, Andre asks his wife, Helene (Patricia Owens), to help him commit suicide and destroy all evidence of the dangerous research. When she complies, Helene faces a murder investigation, but Andre’s brother, Francois (Vincent Price), works desperately to save his sister-in-law and convince the police inspector (Herbert Marshall) that her story is the truth.

The film opens with the death of Andre, so the audience is never in suspense about his fate. As the scientist who transgresses against the boundaries of nature, Andre’s demise might even be warranted, although the film prefers to cast him as a martyr to scientific progress. Helene’s more personal struggle in the aftermath provides the narrative’s tension; will she be executed for murder or committed to life in an insane asylum? Both outcomes spell disaster for her and her young son, but her story, when she finally agrees to tell it, seems far too incredible to be real. Francois, who has long been in love with Helene, acts as the amateur detective trying to figure out the mystery of Andre’s death and Helene’s part in it. Unlike Inspector Charas, Francois knows enough about his brother’s research to believe that such an invention might have been possible, even if all of the evidence has been destroyed. The proof that he finally finds is so shocking that he and Charas are thrust into the same position as Helene, driven to destroy life in spite of their own principles.

CinemaScope photography gives a sense of grandeur to the bizarre story, even though most of the action takes place indoors. The actors also bring gravitas to the narrative with their serious performances. Vincent Price in particular plays it straight and fills the role of the thoroughly human Francois instead of the monstrous Andre. By 1958, Price had already starred in horror features like The Invisible Man Returns (1940) and House of Wax (1953), but he was not yet entrenched in the campier work of William Castle or Roger Corman; House on Haunted Hill (1959) would not appear until the next year, with Corman's House of Usher following in 1960. Herbert Marshall lends the movie even more dramatic weight by playing the skeptical police inspector; an actor known primarily for films like The Letter (1940) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), Marshall serves as an anchoring presence, assuring us that this tragic tale is meant to be taken to heart. Patricia Owens and David Hedison are at their best in the scenes that depict their happy marriage before the fateful accident; once Hedison dons the fly head, he has to project Andre’s misery through the use of his one human hand, while Owens must deliver the inevitable reaction shot when Andre’s inhumanity is finally revealed. It is Owens who gets to make the film’s most prescient, and perhaps ironic, statement about the speed at which progress changes human life. “I get so scared sometimes,” she says. “The suddenness of our age!” We have to wonder what she would think of the world nearly 60 years later.

Director Kurt Neumann made The Fly near the very end of his career; for examples of his earlier work try Tarzan and the Amazons (1945), She-Devil (1957), and Kronos (1957). Look for David Hedison in The Lost World (1960) and Live and Let Die (1973). Patricia Owens stars in The Law and Jake Wade (1958) and The Gun Runners (1958). Herbert Marshall also ventures into horror territory in Gog (1954), but be sure to appreciate him in the clever Pre-Code heist comedy, Trouble in Paradise (1932). Vincent Price reprises his role as Francois Delambre in the 1959 sequel, Return of the Fly. The final installment, Curse of the Fly (1965), continues the story of the Delambre family but stars Brian Donlevy and George Baker.

Classic Films in Focus: THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945)

Few romantic movies could be more tenderly affecting than John Cromwell's sentimental drama, The Enchanted Cottage (1945), which stars Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young as imperfect people who find an unlikely love affair awaiting them in a small seaside house. This might, in fact, be the perfect classic film for Valentine's Day, especially for those who want love to come to everyone, not just the beautiful and the fair. This sweet story, with moving performances from Herbert Marshall and Mildred Natwick as well as the leading couple, is exactly the sort of thing to watch with the love of your life, or at least with a pint of ice cream and a box of tissues at hand.

Robert Young stars as Oliver Bradford, whose original wedding plans fall apart after he's maimed and scarred in the war. Hoping to hide from his former fiancee (Hillary Brooke) and his flighty mother (Spring Byington), Oliver takes up residence in the little cottage where he had intended to spend his honeymoon. There he encounters Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire), a plain, kindly girl who doesn't seem to mind his injured looks. Oliver marries Laura without any real romantic feelings about her, but something magical happens to the pair after their wedding day.

It's true that The Enchanted Cottage treads lightly where the protagonists' appearances are concerned, but the story suggests their flaws more than it actually shows them. Without makeup and carefully styled hair, in ill-fitting everyday clothes, Dorothy McGuire simply looks like a normal person instead of a movie star, but the transformation scenes still work to great effect. Robert Young's injury makeup includes some scarring around one side of his face, which he accentuates with a useless arm, but he's much easier to look at than, say, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) or The Man Who Laughs (1928), and probably even less scarred than Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face (1941). Both McGuire and Young work hard to sell their characters' self-images as flawed, McGuire with timidity and sadness, and Young with bitterness and despair. We are meant to feel for and with them, and the film succeeds in making that happen.

The love story is presented with a brief frame tale featuring Herbert Marshall as the blind composer, Major John Hillgrove, who befriends both Oliver and Laura and functions as a sort of perfect witness to their early sufferings and eventual happiness. Hillgrove sympathizes with Oliver's despair over his war wounds, having been blinded in the previous war, and it's worth noting that the actor had a special understanding of the role, as he had in fact lost a leg in World War I. Marshall is so good with his artificial leg that you can spend the whole movie fruitlessly looking for any sign of it, but his personal history lends additional pathos to the scene in which the two injured men speak of their feelings and reveal the individual costs of war. Mildred Natwick provides another counterpoint to the young lovers as the widowed owner of the cottage; her relationship with Laura is subtle but effective, and she has several brief but moving scenes that ought to go straight to the heart of any sensitive viewer.

The Enchanted Cottage earned an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Score, and music plays an essential part in the story. The composer, Roy Webb, would collect seven Oscar nominations in all but never win, which is a shame when one considers that his other work includes Cat People (1942), Notorious (1946), and Out of the Past (1947). For more of Dorothy McGuire, see The Spiral Staircase (1945) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947). You'll find Robert Young in The Canterville Ghost (1944) and Crossfire (1947), although he's best remembered today for his later television roles on Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, MD. See Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The Letter (1940), and catch Mildred Natwick in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Court Jester (1955). Spring Byington plays much less irritating mothers in You Can't Take It with You (1938) and The Blue Bird (1940), but I also enjoy her crazed housekeeper performance in Dragonwyck (1946).

The Enchanted Cottage is available on DVD from Warner Archive, but you cannot currently rent it on Netflix.

Classic Films in Focus: THE LETTER (1940)

Like Of Human Bondage (1934), The Letter is another Bette Davis film based on a W. Somerset Maugham work, and it's clear that Maugham was a master at writing the kind of duplicitous, destructive character Davis was born to play. Directed by William Wyler, The Letter is a fascinating study in duplicity and deception, a film where every light side has its dark double and every shot is laden with layers of meaning for the astute observer. The anti-heroine of the film is one of Davis' most insidiously destructive roles, never overtly evil and yet capable of bringing death and ruin to every man who comes near her. Nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1941, The Letter won nothing, but the merit of a film should never be determined simply by the number of gold statues it accumulates, as this deadly little fable offers quite an exciting ride as well as an intriguing depiction of Orientalist hysteria.

The film opens as plantation wife Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) pursues a mortally injured man out onto the veranda of her home. She proceeds to empty a pistol into the mysterious stranger, and the loud reports of each shot stir the sleeping plantation workers to life. Soon her husband, Robert (Herbert Marshall), and a small cadre of other white men are gathered to sort out the facts of the incident. Leslie insists that the dead man assaulted her in a drunken passion and that she shot him in self-defense, a story that her husband and her defense attorney (James Stephenson) both seem prepared to buy. Unfortunately for Leslie, the dead man's widow has a letter that suggests the truth about what happened that night at the plantation.

The story is set in the East, first at the Crosbies' rubber plantation in British Malaya and then in Singapore, where Leslie's trial takes place. The contrast between the refined, over-dressed English and the native population is marked; the sweaty, impassive faces of the plantation workers fill the scene after the shooting incident ends, and then the white men arrive, casually bossing everyone around and imposing order with their rules and formalities. The Brits merely look rumpled and uncomfortable most of the time; repression is a way of life with them. The idea that one might succumb to passion is unseemly and despicable; believing the dead man to be guilty, they congratulate Leslie on her proper response to such outrageous behavior, little suspecting that it is Leslie herself who has really become consumed by animal lust. This is, of course, the danger of the East; one risks infection through too much contact.

That alarming Orientalist fear is realized in the dead man, as well, who turns out to be Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell). Hammond had been notorious as a ladies' man before inexplicably marrying a Eurasian woman, an act that is seen as a kind of race betrayal, even though the woman is half European. The film makes much of the opposition between the fair-skinned, light-haired Leslie and the fantastically exotic Mrs. Hammond, who is played as a kind of dragon lady by a heavily made-up Gale Sondergaard. It would be offensive if it weren't so obviously ironic, with pointedly Eastern music entering Max Steiner's score each time Mrs. Hammond appears on screen. In one telling scene, Leslie enters Singapore's Chinatown to buy the incriminating letter from Mrs. Hammond. Leslie appears in a heavy white veil, looking innocent and frightened but bravely going on, while the imperious Mrs. Hammond looks down on her with a fixed expression of hatred, her dark face framed by black hair and lavishly foreign jewelry. Which is the offender, and which is the victim? The film challenges us to contrast the facts that we know with the stereotypes that we see.

Director William Wyler uses symbols to full effect, including the clouds that move over the moon and the long shadows that reach out from the characters and dominate the screen. The most interesting symbolic element is Leslie's compulsive lace-making. We see her at it over and over throughout the film, tatting the way that a spider spins a web. Like a black widow, she lures the men around her into her trap and then destroys them. Her husband is devastated to realize that his wife is a stranger to him, her lawyer betrays his own ethics to defend her, and her lover ends up dead. The elaborate lacework that she constructs represents her creation of a life built out of lies; when she becomes unable to work at it any longer, we know that she has become disgusted with her own duplicity, but the damage that she has done to the men cannot be undone, and only one ending awaits.

Rebecca (1940) swept the Oscars the year that The Letter was up for its awards, but in retrospect The Letter is certainly the tighter and more thrilling of the two films. For more of Bette Davis, see The Petrified Forest (1936), Jezebel (1938), and Dark Victory (1939). Be sure to catch Gale Sondergaard as the amusingly coquettish Inez Quintero in The Mark of Zorro (1940); she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Anthony Adverse (1936) and was nominated again for Anna and the King of Siam (1946). James Stephenson, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Letter, also appears with Davis in The Old Maid (1939) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). William Wyler earned a dozen nominations for Best Director and won for Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Ben-Hur (1959).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.