Old Acquaintance
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Movie Reviews of Old Acquaintance
Movie Review: double occupancy
Summary: 4 Stars
OLD ACQUAINTANCE is among a handful of Bette Davis films I'd not seen (nor felt compelled to see) before now. Last week I attended a preview of the play upon which the film is based, in a valiant Broadway production of a rather creaky pre-war "sophisticated" comedy, and immediately ordered a DVD of the movie version.
The legendary antipathy off-screen between stars Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins fuels audience appreciation of the on-screen Kit and Millie. Indeed, most discussions of the movie substitute the actresses's names for those of their characters. And indeed their acting styles are so different that they appear to be merely occupying the same film from separate universes. But it's the differences between the stage play and the film that are particularly fascinating.
Almost all the play is radically rewritten for the screen, except for the penultimate scene (now in a taxi) in which Kit helps Millie's daughter understand what it means to be a mature woman.
The play and the movie provide a record of what was considered shocking at the time and how Hollywood reknit controversy into homespun for the Hays Office. In the voiceover commentary, Boze Hadleigh mentions in passing that audiences back in the '40s would expect that a romance between an older woman and a man ten years her junior must fail; but it is precisely this hook that apparently was playwright John Van Druten's central and dominant topic. Since this only takes up the last third of the film, it's easy to see how that's now just a minor plot point.
The original play takes place between Thanksgiving and the New Year in the luxury apartments of Kit and Millie. Kit has just spent the night with her ardent lover (aged 36 on stage and 22 in the film--to make Davis's matronly 42 less ungracious and to explain why her beau isn't apparently in the wartime military when we first meet him). The couple are Manhattan professionals: bright, physically aggressive with each other, and vulnerably in love. No heavy glasses and white-streaked wig (Davis props) suggest that Kit's "older woman" isn't her lover's equal in bed. Their marriage could work.
In Act I, Millie's 18-year-old daughter has been staying with Kit in New York rather than with her own mother in swanky Westchester. The girl staggers in from her date with an older man around nine in the morning, and later confesses that she knows the guy is merely a roue but perhaps he'll make a woman of her. (Not for the Hollywood censors, he won't!) I do agree with director Vincent Sherman that Dolores Moran is not ideal as the daughter. She looks older than even Gig Young, and is taller than both Kit and Millie! But the ingenue virgin is not an easy role to pull off for any actress.
In the play Millie's ex-husband's plan to marry a rival socialite infuriates Millie. Elsewhere she tells Kit outright that she, Millie, always got the goods (husband, daughter, far greater success as a writer) but that Kit always got the real glamour (celebritous love affairs and a reputation as a serious artiste). Millie's raw envy and tinsel attempts to grasp Kit's genuine success combine to make her almost endearing. Inclusion of some of this dialogue from the play might have led to more tolerance toward Hopkins from commentator Hadleigh, but then again he is credited for having written a book about Davis, not about Hopkins.
Millie's ex-husband appears only briefly in the play's second act, when Millie cattily invites him over to smear his fiancee. And the daughter's would-be seducer is mentioned more candidly and more often in the play but is never seen.
The mantra of the women's friendship ("There's always the icing") makes no more sense as a metaphor than the maxim in the play (something about a ladel of cooking fat). And in the play it does not bond them as the wisdom from Millie's mother, but from their childhood cook ... in Negro dialect.
The film version is much livelier by opening up the story to actually play out the youthful friendship, Kit's spurning the advances of her best friend's husband, etc. It's interesting to see so much schtick invented only for the screen, especially in the Twenties section: Kit asleep on the train, the difficulties being photographed, the broken heel, the husband's frequent returns to Kit's bedroom. One wonders how much of this additional material Van Druten himself actually provided.
While the 1940 play concentrates on Kit's sex life and Millie's self-delusion, the movie throws in a hotel house detective who's also a bootlegger. Most variant from the WASPy Phillip Barry sophisticated world of Van Druten's stage show, the wartime movie dutifully promotes patriotic support for the Red Cross ... and almost constant cigarette smoking. But, whatever the decade, Kit and Millie are coifed and dressed in a style contemporary with the Forties. (In a slam at rival Joan Crawford, Davis boasted that she never was filmed wearing oversized shoulderpads; OLD ACQUAINTANCE belies her claim.)
Miriam Hopkins steals the picture in a tremendous feat of comic acting. The voice-over commentary doesn't seem to know this is a comedy. He extols Davis for her constraint as Kit, while dismissing Hopkins as a too vain and B-level star. The play version spells out the "lovable shallowness" of the authoress of potboiler best-sellers, as her daughter and Kit scoff at the middle-aged woman's pretentious gowns, attempts to look younger, and inability to see how ridiculous others consider her to be. (Hadleigh faults Hopkins herself for these excesses.) In the film, Millie's cigarette holder and ostentatious gown for seducing her ex-husband get lost in the general glamour of a Hollywood production. But Hopkins is funny in a manner reminiscent of Carole Lombard, even though she's deprived of the shadings from the play that make the character more sympathetic.
Hadleigh's commentary frequently praises Davis's Kit as an underplayed pillar of tact and wisdom, and opines that no one would marry or stay lifelong friends with the overdone selfish witch that Hopkins limns. In the play, Van Druten points out that "Potboiler" Millie has a cunning for marketing that helps authoress Kit prune the density from HER books. Hadleigh is correct, therefore, to observe that the film all but ignores the authoring bond of these two professional successes, a point he might have citing even more vehemently had he been more familiar with the play version.
It isn't merely that Hopkins's antics are great fun to watch. In Davis's previous film with John Loder, her heroine turns down his marriage proposal with the famous line about not asking for the moon when they've got the stars ... almost as cryptic in actual sense as its cousin about icing, but fun. In OLD ACQUAINTANCE Davis relies on that noble staunchiness for her entire characterization. We've seen it when she dies beautifully in DARK VICTORY and when explaining her husband's heroics to her naive D.C. family in WATCH ON THE RHINE. But here, to me, Davis just comes off as stuffy--a one-note saint. A pleasure to watch, as always, but eclipsed by Hopkins whenever they share the screen.
Hadleigh asks director Vincent Sherman whether Davis sought his advice about how to play the role of Kit. He says she didn't do so until after a couple days of shooting, while he waited for her to raise the matter. (The sign of a not strong director?) When Davis finally did ask him for guidance, what he told her couldn't be more obvious to anyone familiar with the story. Perhaps Wyler or Mankiewicz would have freed Davis to provide a more vinegary subtext.
Curiously, in the current Broadway production Kit's character (and the play) only fully come into their own in the final third. At that time, the Broadway actress playing Kit sells her role by channelling a Bette Davis performance. But better than Davis: the dignified poise and subtle wisdom of a sophisticate, without the faux nobility.
All in all the DVD is a good presentation of this material, though I could only sit through two thirds of the commentary track.
Movie Review: "Millie and I remember things together."
Summary: 4 Stars
Having just read that famed director Vincent Sherman died, it seems a fitting tribute to take a look Old Acquaintance, one of the films he made with the legendary Bette Davis. Part of the recently released Bette Davis Collection volume 2, Old Acquaintance is a classy and stylish movie about the topsy-turvy relationship between two women who end up bearing it all for friendship, loyalty and for love. As the saying goes, friendship has no bounds.
In Old Acquaintance, Bette Davis plays Kit Marlowe, a serious literary writer who has returned to her childhood home to stay with her best friend Millie Drake (Miriam Hopkins). Kit is a down-to-earth and unpretentious sort of girl, modest, cheerful, and ladylike - she sails through life with an unassuming confidence. Millie's husband Preston (John Loder) obviously has a soft spot for her, and likewise Kit is attracted to him, although she doesn't want to admit it to herself or to Preston.
Millie, however, is a surefire pain the neck. Neurotic and insecure, she aches for a life of her own, outside of the trimmings of her husband and her quiet domestic existance, and is inspired by her friend's visit to try and get her trashy romance novel published. Although Kit has had minimal success herself - her own novels have "artistic merit" - she agrees to help Millie out.
Fast forward eight years 1932 and Millie has become a huge success from romance potboilers - most of the critics agree that they're trash. She's now incredibly wealthy and can afford to live in salubrious apartment in Manhattan, deck herself out in gorgeous outfits and give her young daughter Deirdre absolutely anything.
The problem is that she maybe rich but she's still self-absorbed. Preston still suffers by her side choosing to endure indignities to be a good dad to Deirdre. Kit stays the ever-loyal friend, taking Deirdre shopping and putting up with her best friend's temper tantrums. The deep love between Kit and Preston is still unfulfilled, and as the story progresses, he again professes his love for Kit. Kit returns his love but cannot "do that" to a friend.
A woman of integrity, Kit plays the martyr as she turns down Preston's advances yet again. Time moves on and all three characters cross paths, and there's more romantic shenanigans involving Deirdre, (Delores Moran) now all grown up and Kit's younger suitor Rudd Kendall (Gig Young).
Much of the drama in Old Acquaintance centers on the ever changing needs between Millie and Kit. The poor Kit is constantly having to put her own needs on the back burner, while she spends much of her live feverishly trying to placate the insufferably selfish Millie, who has never listened to reason and who automatically assumes Kit's friendship with her husband is more than platonic. Meanwhile, Kit is getting on in years and feels the pressure to marry and have children - this is a real issue for her as she's ten years older than Rudd.
Sherman directs the film with a great style and visual flair and he really manages to nail the characters, emphasizing how diametrically apposed Kit and Millie actually are. Kit is the selfless, dependable sufferer for a cause, while Millie is all to ready to sacrifice a lifelong friendship for petty jealousies.
Old Acquaintance is also notable for the fact that Bette Davis decided to take on the nice, mannered and subtle character, rather than play, showier, over-the-top role, which Hopkins made her own. This is a smart, erudite - if not a little talky - movie that really presents a friendship that truly does weather the stormy waters of time. Mike Leonard June 06.
Movie Review: "There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne."
Summary: 4 Stars
Bette Davis stars as Kit Marlowe, a writer whose first novel was just published to great acclaim. As the movie opens, Kit returns to her small hometown to visit her best friend, Millie Drake (Miriam Hopkins). Millie is a housewife and expectant mother who seems happy, but the visit from the successful Kit sets off a competitive spark in Millie. She decides to write a book herself - a sentimental romance novel of questionable quality - that becomes a best-seller. Soon, Millie is a famous and wealthy author, while Kit toils in semi-obscurity writing novels that sell few copies but that critics love. However, what Kit lacks in success, she makes up for in warmth and kindness. In fact, Millie's husband (Gig Young) and young daughter seem to prefer Kit. Oops! This situation sets into motion a rivalry that spans decades.
"Old Acquaintance" is a smoothly directed and well-acted "women's film" - the kind of movie that flourished in the 1940s. Davis and Hopkins had collaborated previously, on the superior 1939 "Old Maid." The two stars apparently had a bit of an off-screen rivalry as well, and Davis took delight in the fact that her grounded performance aged better that Hopkin's flightier acting in this film. I have to agree that Davis is far better here than Hopkins. Adapted from the successful Broadway play by John Van Druten, the movie is so easily digested that it's easy to overlook some of its flaws. Specifically, the actresses were too old to pull off some of the opening scenes depicting them in their 20s. The plot is also rather disjointed, jumping through the decades without much connective tissue. Also, for a movie about rivalry, the two leads don't really get to argue much close to the denouement, which includes a really silly, almost insulting fight. However, it's a fun romp that fans of Davis in particular are likely to enjoy.
The DVD includes a commentary track with the director, Vincent Sherman, and journalist Boze Hadleigh. It's not clear when this track was recorded, but it's pretty apparent that it was taken from an interview with Sherman (with sporadic questions from Hadleigh inserted later) as opposed to being a true commentary track, as most of the comments are about the picture more generally as opposed to the specific scenes playing. Nevertheless, it's an interesting behind-the-scenes peek that's not available for most 1940s pictures. Sherman tells a fascinating story about going out for a hamburger with Davis after the picture was completed and having the married Davis come on to him. He contemplates having an affair with Davis until a visit from her husband (Arthur Farnsworth) convinces him otherwise. Just weeks later, Farnsworth ended up dead under somewhat mysterious circumstances (an inquest ruled his death an accident). Sherman and Davis went on to work together on "Mr Skeffington" (which is a better movie than "Old Acquaintance"), but Sherman holds back the rest of the story.
Movie Review: The prototype "Womens Picture" - excellent package
Summary: 4 Stars
"Old Acquaintance", a masterful Warner Brothers production from 1943, tells the story of a friendship between 2 woman over 25 years of their lives. Both are authors, one of trashy romance novels and the other of serious ones. This reflects their natures. Miriam Hopkins plays the flighty superficial Millie and Bette Davis plays the level headed intellectual Kit.
Both actresses are well cast and the film raises many issues for women - career versus marriage, youth versus age in relationships etc. In 1943 Hollywood, these were unusual subjects and hence the enormous popularity of the film for the female audience. The film, moving between arch comedy and heavy drama, has a slick, glib quality and will not appeal to men.
"Old Acquaintance" is beautifully made by director, Vincent Sherman. While Hopkins penchant for theatrical mannerisms and overacting sits perfectly on her character here, Davis still outshines her with her superb mastery of the medium. Watch her use of props in this film and her movement around the sets. Hopkins has dated, Davis has not. The climax of the film is probably the scene when an exasperated Davis shakes Hopkins, reportedly reflecting the attitude of the director and the film crew, not just the audience. The film also has a fine Franz Waxman score, never used better than in an intimate scene in an hotel lobby between Davis and John Loder.
The print of the film is excellent and the DVD benefits from a very good commentary by Boz Hadleigh accompanied by the elderly Sherman. It is a treat to hear Sherman speak highly of Davis and her co-operation and intelligence while making the film. There is also a mediocre cartoon and a short film called "Stars on Horseback" which compiles clips, some of which are interpolated misleadingly from Warner's films, showing some of the studio's stars on horses - fairly dumb. The original trailer shows some shots cut from the film and lastly, there is a very good discussion of the film by the a number of historians/ biographers. These Warner's DVDs provide a lot of enjoyable extras and are good value.
This film has never been available before but can now be obtained alone or as part of the Davis Collection Volume 2. It is a worthwhile addition to the usual Davis classics.
Movie Review: At last: the release of one of the most loved of all 40's "women's pictures"
Summary: 4 Stars
When The Bette Davis Collection was rerleased last year on DVD, the most surprising omission was her famous catty comedy/melodrama with Miriam Hopkins OLD ACQUAINTANCE--not only because it is such a seminal film but also because Vincent Sgherman, the director, is one of the few directors from the Golden Age of Hollywood still alive and available to provide commentary (as he did for his other film with Davis MR. SKEFFINGTON). OLD ACQUAINTANCE does not show Davis in one of her very best roles--unfortunately she's required to be somewhat self-sacrificing, but noit in an exciting and over-the-top way (as in NOW, VOYAGER), and Hopkins gets almost all of the best comedy bits. And both the perfoirmances and the direction of the film seem to work against exploring the ambiguities in the script that suggest Davis's character Kit Marlowe may in some ways be as much to blame for the problems in her friendship with Hopkins's character Millie as is Millie herself. (Why is Kit spending so much time in the first place with Millie's husband and daughter? Even if Millie is a poor mother and wife, shouldn't Kit stay out of their lives?) But the film is famous in that it is one of the most important Golden Age films to stress at all the importance of friendship between women, and the ending where the two women, left only with one another at the end and forgiving one another, toast each other with flat champagne is beautifully done. Another plus is the sad sensitive suite for strings Franz Waxman composed for the film, which is one of his finest scores, and really brings out the pathos of the scene in Millie's husband's hotel lobby.