The Little Foxes
|
Our Price: $45.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $32.59 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Little Foxes
Movie Review: William Wyler and Bette Davis: A great ride
Summary: 5 Stars
If there were ever a better movie made about family greed, duplicity and selfishness, I've yet to see it. William Wyler, one of the great directors, is at the top of his form. Bette Davis commands the screen with a performance so powerfully evil you can't stop watching, but it never descends to camp.
The Hubbard brothers, Ben (Charles Dingle) and Oscar (Carl Benton Reid), bankers in their turn-of-the-century southern town, have a scheme to bring cotton factories to the south where the cotton grows. With cheap labor they'll make a fortune. They need their sister, Regina Giddens (Bette Davis) to come up with a third of the required investment. The three believe they can get the money from Regina's sick husband, Horace (Herbert Marshall). He refuses, saying he won't be part of a plan to take advantage of the workers in the town through the schemes of his wife and her brothers. "Maybe it's easy for the dying to be honest," he says to Regina. "I'm sick of you, sick of this house, sick of my unhappy life with you. I'm sick of your brothers and their dirty tricks to make a dime. There must be better ways of getting rich than building sweatshops and pounding the bones of the town to make dividends for you to spend. You'll wreck the town, you and your brothers. You'll wreck the country, you and your kind, if they let you. But not me, I'll die my own way, and I'll do it without making the world worse. I leave that to you." Regina's response is straightforward. "I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I'll be waiting for you to die." The brothers arrange to "borrow" some bearer bonds Horace is keeping in their bank. Horace discovers the theft. He plans to change his will, but dies before he can. Regina now says she wants a 75 per cent share of the scheme or she'll send her brothers to jail. Ben Hubbard simply chuckles and muses about why Regina's husband died on the stairs while she was in the living room. It's a stalemate of scorpions. But, as Ben said to Regina, "The world is open for people like you and me. We'll own it someday."
Most of this takes place in the Giddens' genteel antebellum mansion, yet Wyler has managed to avoid any hint of staginess (where the play, by Lillian Hellman, originated). He keeps things so dramatically edgy and moving that the story and the acting simply is engrossing.
Bette Davis, in my view, could and did go over the top too easily in portraying evil or ruthless women. Here she reins it in enough that her selfishness is stunning but you're reacting to the character, not just to Bette Davis acting. One of her great scenes is when, after her showdown with her husband in the parlor, Horace realizes he's having a heart attack and asks Regina to go up the stairs to his room and bring him his medicine. She just sits there, watching him. It dawns on him that she won't help him. He struggles to the stairs and partly climbs, partly crawls up. The camera focuses on Regina's face as, in the background, you can see him struggling...and dieing. It's quite a scene.
The other cast members are excellent. Charles Dingle, as Ben Hubbard, the brother who has the brains, is at once charming and completely unethical. Herbert Marshall, who often played noble but weak men, this time places the accent on physically weak but morally strong. Teresa Wright plays Alexandra Giddins, Regina and Horace's daughter who finally realizes the monster her mother is and breaks free of her. This was her first movie, and she holds her own very nicely with Davis.
In my view, this is one of the great American movies, and watchable many times. The DVD looks great.
Movie Review: One of the True Greats of Cinema
Summary: 5 Stars
The first thing you notice at the end of 'The Little Foxes' is that, for a change, Ms. Davis' performance hasn't overshadowed all those around her. Although touted as the main character, Davis' portrayal of Regina is a cleverly understated performance, lacking almost all of the trademark Davis moves (the constant cigarette, the acidic voice) that we've come to know and love. She plays it down, to huge success, and gives what is one of her best ever performances in this 1941 production of Lilian Hellman's smart, insightful play.The titular 'Little Foxes' are Regina and her greedy, scheming brothers, Ben (Charles Dingle) and Oscar (Carl Benton Reid). The Hubbard Boys are from a once-wealthy family, fallen on hard times in a Southern community where wealth and family prestige are interchangable. They each need a share of $75,000 dollars to bring a lucrative Yankee cotton mill to their town, and will stop at nothing to get it. Regina, who has married money, and possessing an intelligence and drive that both of her brothers lack, fails to legitimately get her share of the capital from her ailing husband Horace (Herbert Marshall). Under increasing pressure from their Yankee investor, the Hubbards beg, borrow and steal for the money, at the risk and ultimate destruction of all those around them.
Bette Davis is, in 'The Little Foxes', simply one of several excellent performances given by a highly-talented ensemble cast. Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid are superb as the Hubbard Boys, both being highly individual characters while retaining familial similarities. Ben Hubbard is non-confrontational and winning, whereas Oscar is quick to anger and wades in with all guns blazing. They're both as greedy as all get-out, though, and we see this in their private exchanges with each other, Regina, and Leo Hubbard (played as comedy-without-sentimentality by an excellent, young Dan Duryea), the dullest nephew since time began.
Herbert Marshall as Regina's long-suffering husband Horace gives a performance with sympathy and pathos. He is a beacon of unselfishness and decency in a fog of money-grabbing. His final scenes with Regina are simultaneously touching and tense, thanks to Marshall's superior talents.
Bette as Regina Hubbard is something of a revelation. Like I mentioned, she's abandoned almost all of the usual Davis idiosyncrasies to give a performance as impressive as it is hard-edged. As the flinty, cold, manipulative Regina, she excels through her considerable talents as a versatile actress. The contrast between her scenes with Horace and their daughter Alexandra is strong, and an excellent illustration of an over-ambitious woman's mind. The remainder of the supporting cast is strong, with a notable mention going to Patricia Collinge as Oscar's abused, alcoholic wife Birdie - an excellent performance in what could so easily have been a role played for sentimentality.
Direction is top-notch; William Wyler's last collaboration with Bette Davis is arguably the best, with some sweeping vistas of the Giddens mansion interior, and beautiful lighting to complement the gothic, amoral tone of the film. What is essentially a one-room stage play is kept moving at a fast pace in Wyler's capable hands, never slowing or boring the viewer with cliches.
The transfer to DVD isn't the best, but certainly above average for a 63 year-old movie. It doesn't impede on the movie in any way, and what we have in 'The Little Foxes' is a chilling masterpiece that every film fan should own.
Excellent.
Movie Review: The Hollywood Golden Age summit
Summary: 5 Stars
On its surface Lillian Hellman's play THE LITTLE FOXES (1941) seems to be about a wealthy family destroyed by greed in the Deep South of 1900. Matriarch Regina Giddens (Bette Davis at her icy best) presides over a family with a crippled husband (Herbert Marshall) and assorted morally weak and greedy relatives. Repeating their stage roles are Patricia Collinge, Dan Duryea, Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid, and John Marriott, according to Leonard Maltin. Making their film debuts are Collinge, Duryea, Reid, and Teresa Wright. Fans of movie trivia should remember that Collinge and Wright played mother and daughter in Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1942). Collinge plays the weak Birdie here, while Wright is the hope for the future as Regina's daughter. It has a bitter and bitchy family at odds with one another. There is a cotton mill the family owns in town. Since it is prosperous, there are fights over ownership of it. And when a lot of bonds are taken from a safety deposit box in the town bank by family members, Regina wants them returned--or else the equivalent amount of money given to her in cash. As for husband Marshall, Regina stays with him for his money. This is gripping and superbly played drama. It is a complicated family drama, and I hope any errors on my part in terms of relationships are not serious and can be ignored.
Actually, THE LITTLE FOXES seems to me to not be about plot at all, but rather is an exercise in Hollywood Golden Age style. It is fabulously crafted by some of the greatest talents the movies have ever seen---producer Samuel Goldwyn, director William Wyler, writer Hellman, and star Davis in one of her greatest roles. Gregg Toland did the elegant deep-focus B&W photography (such beautiful antique lamps!) the same year he shot CITIZEN KANE. Art director Stephen Goosson won an Oscar for Capra's LOST HORIZON (1937). Costume designer Orry-Kelly won an Oscar for Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), with considerable credits in between. Editor Daniel Mandell won an Oscar for THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946). The background score is by THE MUSIC MAN's Meredith Willson. And the cast is world-class, if not household names. This is such an exquisite movie to look at visually, to study the period re-creation carriages and wallpaper, to marvel at the old-fashioned vested suits, to listen to Hellman's dialogue. And moments of silence. Watch the chilling scene where Regina's foreground face is frozen in a chair while crippled husband Marshall tries to climb a blurry background staircase to get some medicine.
So THE LITTLE FOXES is a feast of a drama for discriminating audiences, and Bette Davis admirers in particular. Samuel Goldwyn also deserves a lot of credit. He didn't produce a lot of movies during the 1930's and 1940's, but each one seems hand-crafted and outstanding now, including THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942) and THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946). William Wyler had previously worked with Davis on JEZEBEL (1938) and THE LETTER (1940); Davis won an Oscar for the former and a nomination for the latter. And Wyler directed Teresa Wright to an Oscar the following year, 1942, with Best Picture Oscar winner MRS. MINIVER. And Hellman's dialogue is cutting sharp and her characters treacherous. THE LITTLE FOXES is an extraordinary movie made by truly extraordinary talents on both sides of the camera. It is really a must-see and may even be a masterpiece, if it catches you in the right mood.
Movie Review: A Gloriously Atmospheric Moral Fable
Summary: 5 Stars
Ben and Oscar Hubbard (Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid), their sister Regina Giddens (Bette Davis) and Oscars son Leo (Dan Duryea) are not nice people. They are a family of profiteering entrepreneurs who have grown to prominence in a small southern town, grabbing the assets of its oldest aristocratic family through Oscars cynical marriage to Birdie (Patricia Collinge) who has since been driven to alcoholism by his abusive lovelessness. Ben and Oscars latest plot is to do a big deal with a business bigshot from Chicago who is keen to set up a new cotton mill with them on the understanding that the wages will be extremely low. Ben and Oscar are keen. Regina is keen. But Regina cant come into the deal in her own right: she must persuade her husband to do so. And her husband Horace (Herbert Marshall) is a very different kind of man from her brothers. To complicate matters further he is dying. Meanwhile her daughter Alexandra (Teresa Wright) is getting close to idealistic young journalist David Hewitt (Richard Carlson) and, not, as her scheming relatives intend, to the useless and corrupt young Leo. This 1941 movie is adapted from a Lillian Hellmans classic 1939 play of the same year. The dates make it closer enough where we are - an era when the overwhelming political issue in the USA was whether to join a European war against Hitler. Its not hard to see from this where Hellmans sympathies lie. The movies theme is the division of humanity three ways: the bad people, the good people who fight the bad people and the good people who just sit by and watch the bad people as they destroy the world; and the clearly articulated thought is that, for good people, sitting by and watching, is not, ultimately, an option.
The movie is a classic and richly deserves to be. The performances are remarkable: notably Davis at her most magnificently malign, Dingle splendidly hateful as her cynical and brutal brother, Duryea as the good-for-nothing Leo, Marshall as the profoundly decent but physically desperately weak Horace and Collinge as the pathetically wrecked Birdie who adumbrates horrifically what, if they are not resisted, her unspeakable relatives might eventually contrive to turn the charming young Alexandra into. Wyler directs brilliantly and the camerawork by Gregg Toland is astonishing in its use of shadowy, long, deep-focus shots. The oppressive atmosphere of hostile emotions running far too high in the southern heat is captured to perfection.
There is certainly a degree of simple-mindedness in the moral landscape of the film. The characters divide rather neatly into two sorts: very good, gentle, decent people and irredeemably evil people. There are no shades of grey, just jet black and lustrous white. And of course the world isnt that black and white. But perhaps insofar as the play is about the issues that World War II was fought over, that is an excusable fault; for those issues, if any ever have been, really were that black and white.
Movie Review: "The grits didn't hold their heat", but this movie is HOT!
Summary: 5 Stars
We Southerners have a saying, "Someone from the North will speak ill about you to your face. Someone from the South will smile and speak sweetly to your face, but cut you to the quick as soon as your back is turned." Hellman demonstrates that readily in her engaging script.
The Little Foxes has Bette Davis at the zenith of her "bitchiness" in this film. With Lillian Hellman's spot-on script, there is no more unfeeling witch than that which Davis portrays...and yet, she does so believably and with charm and elegance. Herbert Marshall, as Davis' sickly husband, is great (though because of his performance in this film, I'll forever think of him as sickly and weak). Theresa Wright as Davis' thoughtful and caring daughter brings a balance to the sinister behavior of Davis' Regina and her brothers (Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid).
Regina Giddens married Horace for position and money. She has ruled the roost during their marriage and installed her corrupt brothers and nephew as managers of the bank Horace owns. Their position allows them to bilk the townspeople and embezzle money. However, when they need a large sum of money to buy a cotton gin, even the crooked family members cannot proceed without funds that even they cannot acquire through graft. Regina must call Horace back from the santiarium where he is recovering from a heart ailment. Horace must agree to partner with the brothers and Regina and open the gin - or else.
Davis' performance is as tightly wound as the bun in which she keeps her hair. The characters are so fully developed that you'll find yourself actually getting involved with the story.
There aren't too many films out there that are as good as this one. Top notch entertainment!