Mr. Skeffington
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Movie Reviews of Mr. Skeffington
Movie Review: Mr. Skeffington
Summary: 5 Stars
Mr. Skeffington is truly one of the many great movies made in the 1940s. A morality play at its best!Movie Review: Mr. Skeffington
Summary: 5 Stars
What has Bette Davis done that you dont love??? Another excellent film.Movie Review: "And good bone structure has a lot to do with it!"
Summary: 4 Stars
Maybe this isn't quite Bette Davis's best film for Fox, but MR. SKEFFINGTON certainly has its pleasures, particularly in its excellent first half. Fanny Trellis is a charming, silly society beauty who adores her ne'er-do-well snobbish brother, the infelitiously named Tripppy Trellis. To save him from going to jail for embezzlement, she encourages the suit paid her by his wealthy self-made boss, Job Skeffington (superbly played by Claude Rains). Although Fanny likes Job very much and treats him mostly with kindness, she is incapable of loving anyone other than herself or Trippy, and she chastely encourages the continued attentions of her other society suitors; eventually Trippy's death drive Fanny and Job apart, until they are reconciled by picture's end.
Davis affecting a very charming and childike breathy voice to play Fanny, which wound up being one of her most memorable roles; although she is almost never consciously cruel, she brings great pain to her husband and to her daughter by her inability to love them. The film allows for great fashion-plate outfits for Davis from Orry-Kelly spanning the deacdes from 1914 to the time the film was made, although the costumnes (like the film itself) take a real downturn in the Roaring Twenties when Fanny is called upon to wear flapper outfits and visit speakeasies with gangsters. The film becomes tediously melodramatic in its later sequences when Fanny must be pushed by nemesis for being so vain and thus she contracts diphtheria, which ravages her face; although the makeup Davis then affects to make herself look old and "dilapidated" (Fanny's term) amusingly anticipates her infamous later look as Baby Jane Hudson, she begins wearing ridiculously dowdy costumes with lace collars even though her character is supposed to be trying to pass as a beauty still. Naturally Hollywood demanded that Davis's Fanny not only be punished for being a abad mother and wife but that she also be redeemed: the final sequence with Fanny and Job reconciling is pretty hilariously over-the-top. Yet both Davis and Rains seem to surmount the material by giving genuinely affecting performances.
Movie Review: "A woman is beautiful when she's loved, and only then..."
Summary: 4 Stars
Earning an eighth Oscar nomination, Bette Davis boldly owns this captivating "women's picture". Playing a vain and self-centered beauty, Davis commands the screen in every possible way.
Fanny Trellis (Bette Davis), the darling of New York society, is penniless thanks to her weak-willed brother but enjoys a neverending string of male admirers traipsing through her Gramercy Park mansion. When marriage finally comes, it's more of a business arrangement. Although she's very fond of Job Skeffington (Claude Rains), Fanny will never settle down as the devoted little wife and mother. Only after a middle-aged Fanny has suffered the ravages of diphtheria will she discover the true value of love over appearances.
Bette Davis was never afraid in playing unsympathetic characters, and in Fanny she found the perfect meaty role. Layered with many shades, moods and colours, Fanny Skeffington wins hearts on and off the screen, despite her more tempestuous moments. Not the most conventional screen beauty, Davis was concerned about playing a woman famous for her looks (Irene Dunne, Merle Oberon and Hedy Lamarr were all briefly considered for Fanny). I can't imagine any of them being better than Davis.
I absolutely adore everything about MR. SKEFFINGTON, from it's lush period design to the bravura performance of Bette Davis, in what must have surely been one of her favourite roles.
The DVD includes the new documentary "Mr. Skeffington: A Picture of Strength", audio commentary with director Vincent Sherman, and the trailer. (Single-sided, dual-layer disc).
Movie Review: A good but not great Bette Davis vehicle
Summary: 4 Stars
Usually it was the acting of Bette Davis that made most of those melodramatic soapers she appeared in watchable, but she's not quite up to par in this one. She plays a narcisstic woman in love with her own beauty; every eligible bachelor around is after her. But she meets the rich (and Jewish) Caude Rains when he is about to prosecute her brother for defrauding him; Davis convinces him not to. Eventually they marry.
But it's a loveless match from the start, and they each find affection in the company of others. After years of this Davis decides to divorce him; Rains settles handsomely and goes to Europe - just in time to fall into the net of the Nazis. Davis flits around wherever her money will take her, until she contracts diphtheria and overnight turns into a Medussa. She's a lonely old hag now, but Rains comes back, blinded in a concentration camp - and because he can't see her, he thinks she's still beautiful. They reconcile.
A lot of the scenes and much of the dialogue are pretty snappy, especially early on. But Davis is just so cloying here and she so over-does that high-pitched, whiny voice that you just want to strangle her. The messages are loud and clear (life is a serious business, physical beauty isn't everything), and even the timely reminder that Hitler's Nazi's were brutal, especially to the Jews, is befitting and commendable in a 1944 movie. And Claude Rains is excellent. I just think the movie could have been better.