Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 2-November-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Little Foxes (1941)

Thank heaven for Southerners. Without them, American scribes would have a much less vibrant palette with which to paint family dysfunction in all its twisted glory --- the clannish feuds; the gender wars; the generational discord; the tumultuous collisions of race and class; all the violence, passion, and despair of red hot life teeming behind cool pillared facades. When you add quaint towns, long dresses, and big trees, it's no wonder that the fascination of Dixie has attracted Hollywood as well. Producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler bring all of these things to bear on their adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play "The Little Foxes," with the added bonus of Bette Davis in a role so caustic and prickly, she puts the itch back in bitch.

"The Little Foxes" takes place at the turn of the last century and tells the story of the Hubbard family: oldest sibling Ben (Charles Dingle), sidekick brother Oliver (Carl Benton Reid), and sister Regina (Davis), who are the leading citizens of a small southern town. All three have devoted their lives exclusively to the pursuit of money (and the luxury and license money affords), giving no thought to the people upon whose backs they tread to reach their goal. At the opening of the film, they form a partnership with a Yankee businessman to build a new cotton mill, a project which requires each of them to invest $75,000. Although supremely conniving and independent, Regina is nevertheless forced by social restrictions and the limits of her personal bank account to obtain her portion of the investment from her estranged husband, who has fled to a sanatorium to recover from a heart condition.

As the Hubbards maneuver to ensure that their potentially lucrative business deal goes through, the true measure of their avaricious narcissism becomes apparent. We get a bracing glimpse of relations between Oliver and his childlike wife Birdie (Patricia Collinge), whom he married solely for her cotton and treats only slightly better than a barnyard cur. Then there's Oliver's not so subtle manipulation of his only son Leo (Dan Duryea), the Neanderthal on the family tree who serves the important roles of goon, pawn, and scapegoat. But the brothers' domestic and eventually larcenous crimes pale in comparison with Regina's treatment of her husband (Herbert Marshall), a thoughtful, kindhearted fellow whose edges are further softened by his impending death. Regina dispatches him (in more than one sense of the word) with such unblinking cruelty and contempt, you almost have to admire the adamant conviction of her horrible self.

Thankfully, "The Little Foxes" does contains a mitigating ray of hope to temper the harshness of its protagonists. This comes in the form of Regina's daughter Alexandra (Teresa Wright), who has somehow reached her late teens in a state of sweet-tempered innocence. With the encouragement of her beau David (Richard Carlson), a broad-minded social reformer who despises the Hubbards as perpetrators of injustice, "Xan" begins to clue into the nature of her family, seeing the acts of viciousness going on around her for the first time and with the same sense of shock that we feel. Her fate, or the question of whether she will be sacrificed on the altar of her family's greed, adds a sense of urgency and tension to the film, and the choice she makes at the end contributes to the feeling that Regina will never be able to shape the world exactly as she wants it. At first, this conclusion seems somewhat abrupt and incongruous, but the same dynamism with which Davis makes Regina so compelling throughout the film also renders the notion of a deep, almost dormant humanity within her believable.

Despite a few outdoor and on-the-road scenes, "The Little Foxes" shows evidence of its stage beginnings, which, for the most part, works to its favor. The intimate atmosphere and dialogue-driven scenes allow the players to command attention, and every one of them comes through with a memorable performance. People who like their drama served up gritty (pun intended) will find it worthwhile to hunt down "The Little Foxes."

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