Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 16-February-03
Spoiler Rating: High

Dark Victory (1939)

Despite the fact that it counts Ronald Reagan among its cast; and that its star calls my childhood home, Vermont, "that narrow, pinched-up little state on the wrong side of Boston;" and that it exists solely to drag its heroine (and viewers) through extremely contrived tortures in the name of three-hankie entertainment, I rather enjoyed the sentimental classic "Dark Victory." Not because of my notable forbearance, mind you, but because of my fondness for historical artifacts and the undeniable talent of the legendary Bette Davis. They don't make 'em like "Dark Victory" anymore, and for precisely that reason, it's worth a look.

The tragic story goes like this: young, breezy Judith Traherne (Davis), a poor little rich girl living the high life with a coterie in lieu of a family, suffers from headaches and loss of vision. Her doctor asks a tall, dark, and handsome colleague, Fred Steele (George Brent), to examine her, and he reluctantly agrees even though he has just closed his practice so he can move to Vermont and devote himself to research. Dr. Steele is troubled to discover that (a) Miss Traherne has brain cancer, and (b) he is falling in love with her. He performs an operation which ends her headaches and restores her vision, but he cannot remove the disease: Judith will die in less than a year. So he convinces her best friend/live-in secretary Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald) that they must keep Judith in the dark about her impending death, so that she can live out her remaining days in normal, happy-go-lucky style. Dr. Steele's bedside deception goes so far as to induce him to propose to his patient, even though the honeymoon will hardly have ended before the bride is gone. Naturally, Judith finds out about her prognosis and goes on a despondency binge (even flirting with the idea of losing her virtue to a rakish horse trainer played by Humphrey Bogart). But she finally realizes that death must be met with courage and peace, and therefore abandons the wild singles life to marry Dr. Steele and devote her final days to the simple, rustic pleasures of Vermont (ha!). She is therefore free to die with extreme (and extremely dramatic) grace, a woman who has had it all and has learned that love and serenity are the only things that matter.

What I like about "Dark Victory" is the portrait it paints of another era and culture (although they may never have really existed in exactly this way). For example, the movie's socioeconomic dynamics are interesting, i.e., the juxtaposition of the idle rich folk and their subordinates, most notable in Judith's relationships with Ann and the horse trainer. (The ladies' costumes are used quite effectively to reflect their distinct social standings, which is also interesting.) Then there's the pointed contrast between the high-spirited, swinging life of the town and the low-key pleasures of country domesticity, which is rife with subtext about the ambitions and values of the 1930s. (It's amusing as well to consider that at a time when medicine was advanced enough to allow for brain surgery, it was still okay to smoke in the hospital.) In addition to the characters and plot, the very fact that "Dark Victory" is so melodramatic also helps to create a sense of a bygone era. Davis emotes by today's standards, but her almost magical ability to switch from near hysteria to suave calm to adorable perkiness in less than a second feels more like genuine vivacity than hamming it up. Because she's so good at what she does, she gives the viewer the feeling not of watching something silly and outdated, but of watching an art form that has well nigh vanished.

"Dark Victory" is not a great movie --- its strokes are a little too broad for that --- but it's an entertaining one because it's so wonderfully old-fashioned, and because Davis is one of the few actresses who could ever overact divinely. And what did I think of Ronald Reagan? Considering that I had never seen him in a movie before and that he plays a perennially drunken playboy, his presence was interesting, too.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.