Home » Bette Davis is the person who can best teach us how to live now – Tracey Thorn

Bette Davis is the person who can best teach us how to live now – Tracey Thorn

by admin

September 25, 2021 2:38 pm

The other day, Ben and I went to the cinema for the first time in about a year and a half. The film we chose for our adventurous release – and we actually experienced it as an adventure – is the remastered version of Madly yours, the 1942 film starring Bette Davis, on the big screen at BFI Southbank. An enjoyable film, valid under various aspects, which tells the story of a woman who frees herself from what held her prisoner to find her place in the world.

Bette Davis plays the role of Charlotte Vale, a middle-aged, unmarried woman, the unwanted daughter of an oppressive and cruel mother. Charlotte’s family is aristocratic and wealthy, but all we see of her at first are her feet as she descends the stairs: thick stockings, very dignified black lace-up shoes, and a skirt that reaches decorously up to the mid-calf.

Bette is made up to look as old and sloppy as possible, with gray hair, eyeglasses and two bushy eyebrows. Above all, however, she appears terrified: she looks like a wounded animal, cornered, kept alert and defensive by her own suffering.

The Trailer for Lost Yourselves


When she comes to a nervous breakdown, to use terminology appropriate for the time, they send her to the clinic headed by Claude Rains, whose therapy seems to consist of the infusion of self-confidence and a bit of weaving on the loom. Once healed, she sets off on a luxury cruise.

Again, the first shot we have of Charlotte on the ship is from the feet up – with what a visible transformation! This time she wears elegant high-heeled shoes and her stockings are light and sheer. In her hand wrapped in a white glove she holds a handbag and the jacket of the suit highlights the thin waistline. Her face is half hidden by the wide brim of her hat but her mouth, highlighted by the abundant lipstick, is proud and intriguing despite the slightly downward angles. So you wonder if she’s still scared and hurt.

Despite the importance of the love story, the central story of the film revolves around her

When, later, she appears surrounded by a cape with butterfly-shaped applications, we finally have a clear picture – her metamorphosis may seem complete, but there is still work to be done. The butterfly has emerged from the chrysalis, but has not yet formed.

Charlotte meets Paul Henreid and falls in love with him, he lights two cigarettes holding them in his mouth together and yes, that scene is still full of sexual tension… indeed maybe it is more so after the covid. That cigarette was between his lips, and now it’s between hers! That pinch of danger gives the scene a new energy!

And despite the importance of their love story, that’s not the central story of the film, which actually revolves around her. Charlotte Vale is regularly hidden by the brim of her large hat, or rather by a veil; most of her person remains hidden even from her as she tries to understand who she really is and what she wants.

In the famous ending of the film, the protagonist understands that that love story cannot be everything for her, much less perfect. “We don’t ask for the moon,” he says. “We already have the stars”. I had the feeling that the entire audience in the hall could have shouted the same words loudly. I’m sure we were all silently saying those same jokes behind the masks, probably in tears.

I have a great nostalgia for films of this kind, especially because I saw them all as a child with my mother. She adored Bette Davis and when she was a girl she looked a bit like her too, with those big, expressive eyes and her hair pulled back to reveal her forehead. We looked together Eve versus Eve, Mrs Skeffington e Sunset. Mom was acting out the scene for me Little foxes in which Davis refuses to give her dying husband his heart medicine and together we reveled in that delicious drama. What perfidy! That charm!

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I saw them in my twenties, when Everyman Hampstead was still showing mostly old fashioned movies and you could drop in at 2pm and find yourself sitting with three other people in total to see. The Mystery of the Hawk, The flame of sin, The blue angel, Pandora’s box, Gilda, Vertigo, The right to kill e Notorius.

To review Madly yours I loved it, as always. From a symbolic point of view, it was a perfect experience: it is the story of someone who has been locked up and who now tries to come out into the light, at first in small steps and with his face half covered. A woman who falls in love with the very idea of ​​physical contact and who eventually looks out of the open window and accepts the limits of love and life itself.

Bette Davis tells us that what we have at the moment is good, it can be enough. It must be.

(Translation by Mariachiara Benini)

This article appeared in the British weekly New Statesman.

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