down home
by Douglas Messerli
Lenore J. Coffee (based on the novel
by Polan Banks), Edmund Goulding (director) The Great Lie / 1941
Hollywood legend has it that Bette
Davis not only wanted Mary Astor to play the villainess in her upcoming film, The Great Lie, but when Astor was
finally given the role, the two women bonded, determined to rewrite it:
"This picture is going to stink! It's too incredible for words... so it's
up to us to rewrite this piece of junk to make it more interesting," spoke
Davis.
What’s more, Astor is asked to perform the incredulous combination of concert pianist and alcoholic playgirl incorporated into the character of Sandra Kovak, a bitchy autocrat beloved by her audiences, but gradually slipping into career decline. Fortunately, Astor was actually a concert pianist early in her life, and could give a convincingly good enough portrait of performing the works (in truth, performed offstage by Max Rabinovitch) that even Spanish conductor and pianist José Iturbi commented to Astor, "How could you not be playing? I have played the concerto many times, and you were right in there!"
It’s hard to comprehend why both of these women are so mad about Brent
(although Davis had actually shared his bed) that they might be so willing to
duke it out for his attentions.
Van Allen lumbers in and out of scenes—thankfully disappearing into the
Brazilian Amazon for much of the film—while Violet dramatically protects her
“baby” Maggie. Davis gets the
opportunity, meanwhile, to express a better self than she was usually asked to
play, goo-gooing and kissing the baby boy with great relish. But the true fun
of this movie lies in the icy interchanges between
the two women (in the most famous of which Kovak stares down her rival, saying "If I didn't think you
meant so well, I'd feel like slapping your face")
who, after confronting one another time and again (Davis gets to play a similar
role the following year in The Man Who
Came to Dinner), are finally forced to shack up together in an intense
storm in the Arizona desert, filmed in California’s Mojave.
These scenes alone give the truth to Davis’ claim about the overly
melodramatic script. As the mean-spirited Kovak stumbles about in the dark,
desperately sneaking cigarette breaks and more of the prohibited foods, the
deviously
Anyone looking at these scenes can see
that these two very different, but equally strong women had truly bonded. And
they make for a marvelous team, erasing the film’s many other flaws.
As usual. Edmund Goulding does a highly credible job, focusing in on his
characters in a way that gives credence to their acting chops; even if Brent
seems not all there, at moments even he too is quite charming.
And then, in the end, Kovak gets the opportunity, for once in her life,
to be noble, leaving the child she has come back to claim, for a better life in
the down home Van Allen Virginia estate; and in Violet (McDaniel) we know that
this child will have a “mammy” who will love him to death.
In real life, the child who played the role was accidently dropped by
one of the off-stage nurses, resulting in a heavy law-suite against the studio,
which I’m sure was quickly hushed up by the studio executives of the day, just
another “great lie.” Yet Astor won the Oscar for best supporting actor, and the
film was surely a box office favorite.
Los Angeles, August 4, 2018
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2018).
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