Mr. Skeffington
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Movie Reviews of Mr. Skeffington
Movie Review: A Movie About Men And Women Without Any
Summary: 1 Stars
As Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1944 NY Times review, to enjoy "Mr. Skeffington" you have to accept the premise that Bette Davis is irresistible to men. A marvelous actor, Ms Davis, and lovely, but not the sort of fabulous face that enthralls every man in the room or anchors a script about looks on looks alone, as Gene Tierney does in "Laura" or Rita Hayworth in "Cover Girl." Bette Davis's beauty is more offbeat and idiosyncratic, and more charged by intelligence and danger - both conspicuously absent from "Mr. Skeffington." Fanny is a vain shallow creature but the actor can't be; a good actor defends her character with nuance and development. Here, in arguably the worst work I've seen a great actor deliver, Davis trivializes this trivial woman (and the film) in a dismally uneventful performance, brutally monotonous - there's not a drop of humanity in it. Her lilting vocal affectation - a wincing cliché the moment you hear it - never alters its rhythm or pitch, never softens or shades, never deepens or reveals, even down to the final scene when she holds her blind broken husband in her arms. Apparently, beauty was Fanny's only asset, and that seems to suit the occasion of a film without any real men or women. The suitors are simpletons, pure pastiche and impossible to believe. The brother, whose criminal conduct and death in the war drive much of the plot, remains an unmotivated overwrought enigma that evokes no curiosity or compassion. And Skeffington himself, the only intelligible performance in the movie (Claude Rains), undermines any credibility he might accrue by marrying a woman with nothing whatever to offer besides pride of possession.