“Suppose we just don’t talk about
it any more”
Our first sight of Bette Davis, in Dark Victory, shows her character,
Judith Traherene, in bed asleep before the ring of a telephone arouses
her. The last scene portrays her lying in bed, eyes closed, awaiting
death. These two similar images not only serve as bookends, but also
are a metaphor for the theme of denial that dominates most of the
movie…
It’s
interesting to look for the patterns of the filmmaking that dramatize
[the denial theme].
If all directors are divided into two groups, realist and formalist –“ in
which the realist wishes to make the audience forget that there’s
a camera at all (and) the formalist is constantly calling attention
to it” – then Edmund Goulding is a realist. The camera
work is straight forward, with very few extreme angles.The lighting
is high
key, with bright even illumination, and Bette Davis’ face
is often further illuminated. Most of the scenes with Bette Davis
and
George Brent
together are close-ups, and in many of these Brent is turned away
from the camera so it focuses on Bette Davis.
Dark Victory was made in 1938 and released in 1939. Denial was
a way of the world at that time. Under the leadership of Neville Chamberlain,
England and France adopted a policy of appeasement, which was not abandoned
until after Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939. The Munich Pact,
signed by
Germany, Italy, France and Britain in September 1938, agreed that a region
of Czechoslovakia should be ceded to Germany. It occurs to me that the Munich
Pact
promoted an attitude of avoidance, if not denial, that permeated both
Western Europe’s and also the United States’ attitude toward Germany. Why
else would President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ignore the fact that Jews were
perishing in Hitler’s death camps?
Whether or not the producer and director made the decision to make
a film about denial, the primary theme of Dark Victory is one
of denial. And its first and last views of Bette Davis are a metaphor
for a world resisting
arousal.
[after Kitty Ward]
|