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The Letter · The Next Reel Film Podcast

• 0:07
  Pete Wright: I'm Pete Wright.
• 0:08
  Andy Nelson: And I'm Andy Nelson.
• 0:09
  Pete Wright: Welcome to the next reel. When the movie ends,
• 0:12
  Andy Nelson: our conversation begins.
• 0:15
  Pete Wright: The letter is over.
• 0:17
  If you love a person, you can forgive anything. Okay, Andy. We're back to Bette Davis.
• 0:29
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Our Bette Davis series. We started this a while back, which was a fun series to have dived into. Let's see. What did we talk about?
• 0:42
  Pete Wright: Do you remember all the Bette Davis films? Oh my gosh.
• 0:45
  Andy Nelson: Let's see. Dark Victory, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, All About Eve, Now Voyager, and
• 0:49
  Pete Wright: the Little Foxes. So apparently, you do. Well done.
• 0:53
  Andy Nelson: I was testing you.
• 0:54
  Pete Wright: Yeah. See if you did
• 0:55
  Andy Nelson: your homework. And and this is your add on, and I'm curious. I mean, Betty Davis, there's so many reasons to talk about Betty Davis, but I'm curious what drew you to, return to the Betty Davis series, and what drew you to discuss this particular film?
• 1:12
  Pete Wright: Well, I had never seen this film, and it I remember it having come highly regarded as, you know, a a Betty Davis entry into noir. It's it has a a sort of complicated journey from book to stage to screen and and also is a a victim of the Hays Code. And how does that impact the story? The early letterbox reviews that I had read about the movie, the high regard that this is this film is held in film circles just kind of makes it an easy add to this particular list. I'm very glad I watched it.
• 1:53
  And, yeah, I I think it's I have I'll say it right now. I have I have some quibbles, and yet I'm I'm still very glad to have this in the canon.
• 2:04
  Andy Nelson: I yeah. Having quibbles with this, I think, is is a is a fair assessment. I mean, I enjoyed it. I did enjoy the film. I think it plays well.
• 2:13
  There are definitely some dated elements that we surely will discuss as we have this conversation, most notably some, racist depictions of of Chinese and Malay, and and the way white people are treated. Some of it was almost comical the way that it played.
• 2:35
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I mean, this could have been in the imperialist era filmmaking that we that we're really celebrating here. Like, this is, yeah, this is high imperialist dignity, and it's rough. There's some rough watching.
• 2:49
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. There is. There is. But, I mean, Bette Davis is always fun to watch. I wouldn't put this in, like, one of my favorite Bette Davis performances, but it does have some performances that are genuinely did love.
• 3:01
  For sure.
• 3:02
  Pete Wright: Alright. So about the movie. The movie is based on w Somerset Moms play, the letter. It originally derived from a story that he had published earlier. It had already been made into a film in 1929, which I haven't seen.
• 3:21
  Have you seen that one? I did. I actually watched it as well. Oh, like for homework. Like doing all the homework instead of what I did.
• 3:30
  Andy Nelson: Did. I need extra credit, maybe we should just call it. Yeah.
• 3:33
  Pete Wright: Do you can you give me just a a brief review of that of how that film works for you in the context of the story?
• 3:42
  Andy Nelson: My impression I mean, I've never read mom's, neither his short story nor his play. My understanding is that that version, the 1929 version, hones a little truer to the play. It starts with our our our well, our our we're calling her our protagonist. So it starts with our lead character, we'll just say, played by Jean Eagles, and her husband. It starts with the two of them at home having a conversation.
• 4:16
  She's I don't know. Do you say knitting lace? She's sewing her lace. Whatever she's doing, she's lacing, we'll just say. Okay.
• 4:24
  Good. Robert decides, I'm gonna go into town. I gotta return this gun. And so he leaves, and she sends a letter off. And then then Jeffrey Hammond shows up.
• 4:38
  Interestingly, Jeffrey Hammond is played by Herbert Marshall, who plays her husband Bob in this movie, which was just fantastic to see him Outstanding. Both of them. He shows up. They have the whole conversation, and we get a whole sense of the story as it's as as we come to find out later in this film where they've had an affair, but now he's with in that film, it's just a Chinese woman. It's not Eurasian.
• 5:07
  She's, she's Chinese, and they're not married. It's his mistress. And, he says, you know, I I don't want anything to do with you anymore. I'm done. And, in a fit of rage, she shoots him.
• 5:21
  So we see all that at the beginning. All of that's, like, laid out in front of us. Then we kind of jump to the trial, and we see the trial. It's it's only like a sixty five minute film. It's very short.
• 5:33
  We see the trial, and then everything from there kind of plays out the same. The way that they shot her going to pay for the letter was beautifully crafted. I love that whole sequence. And then the film the story ends when her lawyer tells the husband, you know, he gives him the letter, and her husband sees what's been going on and wants the truth out of Leslie. And he gets the truth, and she's just like, with all my heart, I still love the man I killed.
• 6:06
  Pete Wright: The man I killed. Right.
• 6:07
  Andy Nelson: So we get that line, and that's the end. Like, that's how it ends. We just paint the black, and we're done. And so it's a much darker pre code story. Right?
• 6:19
  Like, we're not getting the story, of the widow's revenge or the police or anything afterwards. So it's just it's a darker tale, and and it's interesting. And honestly, I actually kind of preferred Jean Eagles over Bette Davis. Andy. I know.
• 6:40
  For a Bette Davis series, I feel like that I shouldn't be saying that, but No. It was true. It was true.
• 6:46
  Pete Wright: That's fascinating. Well, there's a lot that's fascinating in this. And as we talk about the story here, I don't know how I I mean, I think we need to fully litigate what it means to be darker because there's not a lot of light in the way the the 1940 movie ends. I am curious of the rationale of the Hays Code. We'll talk about this in a in a second.
• 7:10
  The the story, as you already laid out, you laid out what we don't know in the 1940 version. Because the the 1940 version of the movie, if you haven't seen it, it opens with the murder, not the experience of everything that leads up to the murder. What follows as her husband and the attorney gather around Betty Davis, around Leslie in their bungalow, is the start of a long lie that she tells to rationalize her murdering this guy. And the lie is that he he came on to her, that it was one of I mean, would you call it sexual abuse? Would you call it I mean, was it rape?
• 7:56
  Was it it feels like it was that she was dancing around.
• 8:01
  Andy Nelson: I think she paints it as rape. Okay. I mean, he tried he tried to make love to me and
• 8:06
  Pete Wright: I shot him. So that's the line. He tried to make love to me and I shot him.
• 8:11
  Andy Nelson: Yeah.
• 8:11
  Pete Wright: That's right. Yeah. So everybody just sort of buys that. She tells the story with clinical precision. Right?
• 8:22
  That, obviously, she's telling a fib. There is nothing in here that seems like she's being authentic. And this brings me to my first quibble about the film. It it is the act of maybe this was this was from the original play, but it's the act of allegiance to exposition. This is a long sequence where she's telling the story, and I think a it the it's what makes the filmmaking feel dated.
• 8:51
  I think in a a a more modern film, you might have this told via unreliable flashback. Right? You might have more action on screen rather than just her telling this story. I found myself getting a little bit bogged down in the way she tells the story and anxious that there wasn't enough happening. There is a whole middle ground in this movie where it's just telling people telling stories to each other that could have been told in a much more dynamic fashion through some sort of flashback.
• 9:27
  Your take.
• 9:28
  Andy Nelson: Well, I I mean, I'm glad we didn't have the flashback. I I think that would have been hard. I mean, it the only way they could have effectively done that if it if the flashback itself was unreliable, and it was always from her
• 9:40
  Pete Wright: I literally sent it. Yeah. Unreliable flashback.
• 9:43
  Andy Nelson: Oh, okay. I didn't oh, yeah. Okay. For some reason, I didn't. I I zipped past unreliable and went straight to flashback.
• 9:49
  Pete Wright: Yes. It is the most important word in the scene.
• 9:51
  Andy Nelson: I know. Skip the let's skip the word that mattered. I think that again, I haven't read the play either, but it was interesting that in the 1929 version, we don't get that big expository moment with all the white people just sitting around casually after the murder. Just like relaying the whole thing. No police.
• 10:09
  Just yeah.
• 10:09
  Pete Wright: And, like, can we just say the murder happens, and the next scene after the exposition is these three white dudes it make her make breakfast for them. They all sit around breakfast before they take her to the police.
• 10:24
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. It definitely is something that speaks to its time of privilege Yes. And expectation. So but we don't get any of that in the 1929 version. Is it in the play?
• 10:40
  I don't know. But what we do go is straight to the trial, and she's doing all of that recounting on the witness stand, which in some way makes more sense because it's like, you know, she she keeps saying, oh, I can't go on and the lawyer's like, I know, but you have to. And she she eventually gets the whole story out. Is it better? Is it worse?
• 10:59
  In my money, it ended up being better because one of my biggest struggles with Bette Davis is in that scene because she always is kind of like half smiling, and I'm just like, she's not selling this. Am I supposed to be believing her? Because I'm not. And that was a real struggle for me with her performance in the film. I the rest of it, think, is is fine.
• 11:22
  But, like, in that sequence, I'm like, I can't buy her because she's just too casual. She's laying back and smiling as she's talking and recounting this. She doesn't seem traumatized in any way at all. And that that was a real struggle, for me because it just it kind of killed the fact that
• 11:39
  Pete Wright: I was meant to buy buy her story. I wonder, and and I'll say I 100% agree. The only way I can rationalize that performance is that it is another layer on the privilege cake of this movie, which is, oh, this is a white woman of of plantation ownership, and she committed a crime. But, you know, she doesn't have to worry so much about it because she comes from a family of prestige, and she's part of this this sort of ownership community. That's how I I had to put it in my head in that shaped box.
• 12:17
  Because otherwise, you're right. I don't buy her at all. I don't know what they were going for. This had to be a directorial and performance choice because it doesn't make sense to me.
• 12:30
  Andy Nelson: No. I mean, I do like, William Wyler has one moment in that whole sequence where it's creative the way that he chooses to shoot it, where there's it's almost like she's telling the story, and the camera is just focusing on the action that had happened. Right now, there's nothing in front of the camera. It's just, you know, we see where she's talking about, you know, that's where Jeffrey was standing. And then I went to the drawer, and I grabbed the gun, and the camera, like, pans over to the drawer, and it pans up, and and then you see kind of the camera go through through the the door to the porch as Jeffrey stumbles after she shoots and then falls to the ground and the camera falls.
• 13:13
  Like, the way that he shot that, thought was interesting because I'm like, okay. At least we're kind of getting a replay even if it is, as you said, like, that's that's perhaps the closest we get to our unreliable, flashback. But the fact that the way that it's playing is just it's so hard to buy. And, I mean, I guess you can say, okay. Is is the lawyer is is is he buying into it that much?
• 13:44
  Or or maybe not? Maybe he's I mean, he's the one who's kind of pushing and asking the questions, but I I did kind of like, okay, Howard, you're not quite pushing hard enough. And but again, it's like, it's such a weird situation because it's like, it's her lawyer. It's like the family lawyer is here. I I never could quite figure out who that other guy was who kind of came along with him, but he kind of pops in and out a few times.
• 14:06
  But we never have any cops. Like, there's no detectives. Like, there's no one here actively pushing for the the facts. It's just friends and and the family lawyer who is gonna be defending her, and so he's trying to get to the bottom of it. But it's just I don't know.
• 14:23
  The whole thing played poorly for me. That whole open was was not the open. Like, the open is fantastic. Like, the the whole setup of the film, it's after that when everyone shows up. That was rough.
• 14:34
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. No. I I'm I absolutely agree. I feel like it was for me, that entire sequence, and it's not a short sequence before we get into some of the mechanics of of the letter itself.
• 14:48
  It's muddy. It's really muddy. There's a lot of it's just unclear. You're not sure. I mean, you you already said it.
• 14:55
  You're not entirely sure who our protagonist is. Who are we following in this movie? Who are we meant to to have as our audience avatar? I I thought at one point, maybe it's the naive the the younger guy who's just there that you mentioned. We don't know who he is.
• 15:11
  That that went away quickly. Pretty quick. He's disposed. So I'm not quite sure. I think it ends up being Joyce, the lawyer.
• 15:20
  I think we we end up being more because he's the he ends up being the character of moral fortitude or not fortitude, moral awareness in the end of the movie and regret. And I and I think that's so we'll get there. So after this sequence of exposition, we get to some of the mechanics of the letter. We discover everybody seems pretty happy with how things are going. She's definitely in jail, but she's she they're able to see her and play games, and she does a lot of lacing while she's in jail.
• 15:51
  It seems to be a fairly minimal penitentiary experience for her.
• 15:58
  Andy Nelson: Oh, she seems like she's already kind of, like, best friends with the the female warden. You know. Yes. It's just like, oh, she's just so sweet. It's such a shame she has to stay here.
• 16:09
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I know. Would we include this in the women in prison series that
• 16:13
  Andy Nelson: we
• 16:13
  Pete Wright: did Right. Before? No. The answer is no. So we discover by way of the, I think, Chinese assistant to Joyce Ong that there is a third party who has in their possession a letter written by Leslie to the murdered Jeffrey saying, you have to come over here.
• 16:36
  I need you to come over right away. Leslie had already said, I haven't had any contact with him in weeks, and yet that letter was written the day he died. He was killed. There is suspicion. The only people who know about it are obviously Ong, the third party who has the original letter, and now the lawyer and and Leslie.
• 17:00
  This is not in widely known. The prosecutor does not know about this letter.
• 17:05
  Andy Nelson: And that was a whole thing that I thought was interesting where it's like, it even comes up. Like, they Ong brings this letter up as something that the widow has, that she had found this letter, kept this letter, and was going to turn it over to the prosecutor. Right? But then there was like this whole thing where it's like because I don't know. In in the in the legal world, like, when you bring things up, they're supposed to let you know of the other information is my understanding.
• 17:38
  Like, that's That's discovery. There's a discovery. Yes. Thank you. But but the way that they describe it is is when he tells Leslie about it, she's like, well, surely they wouldn't have shared the evidence if they didn't wanna sell it.
• 17:53
  I'm like, I don't I don't think that's how it works. It's like, oh, that made me laugh. I'm like, yeah. Okay. So maybe discovery wasn't quite a thing in in the 1940.
• 18:06
  I don't know. That was
• 18:07
  Pete Wright: weird. The letter, we have a copy of the letter. If we could take a sidebar on what it means to make a copy of a letter in 1940, it's pretty much just rewriting the letter in your own handwriting Yes.
• 18:18
  Andy Nelson: Word for word. Yeah.
• 18:20
  Pete Wright: And that is called a copy. And it hinges on there's still mystery left here because he says, if we see the original and it matches your handwriting, we're in trouble. That I I was fascinated by that because they actually buy themselves an extra layer of suspicion in this window between seeing the copy written in somebody else's handwriting, but only seeing the words and actually seeing the original letter. What I mean, how incredibly useful a tool narratively that we don't have anymore when we use the word copy.
• 18:54
  Andy Nelson: No. Exactly. That was a very interesting element because, as he says, when he looks at the letter, he's like, well, this isn't her handwriting. Yeah. And they're like, well, of course not.
• 19:04
  Yeah. It's a copy. Yeah. That was very interesting to, to hear how that played out. Okay.
• 19:11
  We're gonna take a quick break, and we'll be right back. I like the element of like, this is the part of the film I really enjoyed is, like, the threat of a possible letter, the blackmail, like, all of this actually played really interestingly. Actually, leading up to missus Hammond killing Leslie. Like, I I liked all of that a lot. Like, I thought it was really interesting the way all of that played.
• 19:39
  And I think in the scope of what works best about everything with the letter is how Howard Joyce, our lawyer, how he struggles with the with the realities of this. Like, he's like, we had talked about Born Yesterday back in our best actress series from the 1950 Oscars, And Judy Holiday's husband has a lawyer who has succumbed to not making moral choices on behalf of his client, taking lots of money to do so, and has become an alcoholic because of it. But he's just like shrugged his shoulders and says, yeah, this is who I am. Howard Joyce is like at the first stage of that. Like, is it's, I don't know, presumably, the first time he's been in a situation where clients have or or clients or people outside of of the case have have said, hey.
• 20:41
  You can buy this, and it will save your client. And he then has to make the choice, and he does. And and because of that, James Stevenson playing Howard Joyce ended up being my favorite character in the film. Like, such interesting exploration of a lawyer having this internal battle with, do I do what's right? Do I I mean, I'm working on behalf of my client.
• 21:05
  Should I still go ahead and do that? I thought that was fascinating, and I really enjoyed everything going on with him.
• 21:12
  Pete Wright: Yeah. That's that's what I mean by him being being our protagonist. I'd say I'll say he's my protagonist. Oh, yeah. Because I was so interested.
• 21:19
  We get the whole ethical journey for him. We get the should I do it? I'm gonna do it. I feel bad about doing it. We're in the middle of doing it, and then I regret having done it.
• 21:27
  Right? We get the whole loop, and I think every stage of that, he felt probably the most believable artifact of the film.
• 21:35
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. And it is this is a tricky film when it comes to the whole concept of protagonist. And I know they weren't kind of examining it quite as much as they are in through today's eyes and through all of the different screenwriting tools and books and everything, but it is a tricky film to call Leslie our protagonist. I mean, we're largely following her through the entire film, and she definitely has kind of like this dark journey. But in so many ways, it does feel like Howard's story.
• 22:08
  You know?
• 22:09
  Pete Wright: Yeah. For sure. The sequence where they go into Chinatown to actually procure the original letter, it begins, for me, the most sort of exciting parts of the film. And first and foremost, it's because of the cultural dynamic that is completely inverted between Hammond's widow who has the letter and does not speak English and Betty Davis who is wearing the lace shawl. And we have Ong between them who is translating.
• 22:46
  The exchange as Hammond's widow takes power in this scene by standing on the high steps, by iteratively making Leslie remove pieces of herself, the protection of the shawl, come over I want her to stand up and come over to me, all told through broken translation. And then finally handing the letter, but but really dropping the letter on the floor, making Betty Davis bend to pick up the letter in front of her, I thought was really fantastic. Like, what a wonderful exploration of power between these two women that is completely turned on its ear. We should say they pay $10,000.
• 23:30
  Andy Nelson: Which is roughly about $200,000 in today's Wow. Okay.
• 23:37
  Pete Wright: Mhmm. So they pay $10,000, which is a third, it turns out, of what Leslie's husband needed for his for a new plantation that he's eyeing in Sumatra. But they don't tell him how much he's they're spending of their money, which ends up being problematic. Like, she goes back. They have the letter now.
• 24:00
  The letter is in the lawyer's in Joyce's care. They go to trial, and in a very quick trial sequence, she is acquitted. She's off the hook. She leaves. It sounds very much like much of the movie in 1929 is much of the express version of the movie in this in 1940.
• 24:23
  Andy Nelson: Well, I mean, we definitely got the sequence going into the kind of the the dark shadowy or were part of Chinatown to to procure the letter. I really liked this. I kind of prefer the sequence in the 1929 version because, one, the widow speaks English. It's kind of broken English, but she speaks English. And two, because of that, she is made to do it alone.
• 24:50
  Howard waits in the alley with the rickshaw for her, and she has to go down these dark stairs into this. It's kind of a I don't know what your what we would call it, but there's a room with a lot of women behind a cage, like, it's almost like a because in in the 1940 film, it feels like an opium den. Like, the the one guy is smoking opium. Here, it felt like, okay, are these all, prostitutes? Or like, what's what's kind of the situation here?
• 25:24
  But they're all kind of behind this caged wall. The whole thing plays, but it's just Leslie interacting with missus Hammond, and it's just it's so creepy. And when she drops the letter, like, all of the other women start laughing at her, and it just it it played so well. This this version, I think, plays fine. I I enjoy how it plays.
• 25:45
  I enjoy all of that stuff. If there's a big problem, we haven't really come come out and completely said it, but it's the fact that Gail Sondergaard, a Hollywood actress of, I believe, Dutch origin, is in yellowface and is playing missus Hammond. Rough. The Eurasian. It plays poorly.
• 26:05
  It's it's just kind of and and, you know, I I'm sure we talked about Gail Sondergaard in a similar situation because we talked about the Anna and the King of Siam, which came out a few years later, and she in that film is also playing somebody, of Thai descent as she's the the wife of the king. And so it's like, man, what was what was going on in Hollywood that one, Gail Sondergaard was the person to go to if you needed to somebody to play an Asian actress. And two, just the fact that they were doing it, you know, it's like, ugh. So
• 26:40
  Pete Wright: They make a big deal of calling her your Asian over and over again. Is that was that in 1929 too?
• 26:48
  Andy Nelson: No. She's Chinese. She's a Chinese mistress in the 1929 version.
• 26:52
  Pete Wright: Do you think Eurasian was some way to to buy them some early credit for making a Dutch woman play yellowface?
• 27:00
  Andy Nelson: No. It was the per the Hays Code actually told them, you can't have it be a Chinese woman. And Eurasian was there the way that they placated them. So I
• 27:13
  Pete Wright: didn't catch that. That's fascinating. Yeah. The Hays Code was so dumb. So dumb.
• 27:20
  Andy Nelson: So Yeah. Okay. A weird thing.
• 27:22
  Pete Wright: We're not getting we're not yet to the dumbest part of the Hays Code, which is the end. So they they have the letter. The final reveal well, it's not even the final final reveal, but the reveal when her husband sits down with her and her lawyer and says, you guys, I'm very excited about this Sumatra thing. I just need to go get my money, and I've got an investor, and we're gonna have our own plantation. It's gonna be great.
• 27:44
  There's a lot of hope and exhilaration. And the lawyer says, you know, I paid 10,000 of your dollars, as you said, 200,000 of your estate in today's dollars to get this letter back. Real, real sorry, but you don't have the money you thought you had to make this deal. And then he wants to see the letter itself, the original letter, and she finally comes clean. She has Joyce give her husband the letter, and she says, I loved him hard.
• 28:15
  And I saw we were getting together all the time, and I had him come over. And I I had him come over because I heard rumors of this other woman that he loved her, and he said, yeah. I did. I really love her. I love her so much.
• 28:30
  I'm gonna be with her and her own only. And it it was that bit of ugliness that caused her to pick caused Leslie to pick up the gun and shoot him six times. Crime of passion.
• 28:43
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. I mean, there's an interesting depiction of relationships at that particular point in time, which I actually thought was interesting. The fact that, you know, she is brought over here, and she kinda in some way blames Bob for a lot of this. The fact that you brought me here. You put me here in this situation where, you know, I'm I'm the wife of a plantation manager, and and there's nothing else to do.
• 29:09
  And no you know, I I have nothing here. And it you kind of put me in this situation where I'm just looking for anything. And it's not right. It certainly doesn't justify any of it. But I don't think Bob had ever really thought about any of that, you know?
• 29:24
  And so I thought that was interesting. Like, I really liked Herbert Marshall so much in this film and loved the way that he played the husband and and struggled with the what she had done. And then at this point, the truth and and the realities of of all of that and and the nature of how Howard's looks like, you know, he's gonna forgive you. And she's like, yeah. And like, that's that's kind of who he is.
• 29:49
  And I thought that was an interesting tell that they recognize that the truth kind of broke Bob, but he will forgive her and move forward.
• 30:00
  Pete Wright: He will in spite of himself, and he continues to forgive. And all this is happening on the eve of a a party celebrating her freedom. So the next scene, he's in his dinner jacket, and he's standing at their bar in their estate, and he's just he's drinking, and he's very, very sad. And she finally enters the room, and everybody's congratulating her on her freedom. We we get to watch him just exude the scorned husband.
• 30:31
  I think it's I think it's a great sort of cap to exactly what you're talking about and and how good Herbert Marshall is. There this is when things get a little bit I I just am a little fuzzy, so I need you to help me. When they go to Chinatown, she opens a box in the antique shop, I guess, where they are, and she sees this lovely pair of blades with an ornate handle. She touches it and then goes about her business. After this party, she goes into her into her chamber, her room.
• 31:04
  She opens the balcony. I guess this would be before she goes out to the party. She opens the balcony, and she sees one of these knives on the ground outside of her balcony door of her veranda. She does nothing with it. She closes the door and goes out to the party.
• 31:22
  Later, she comes back and opens the door. The knife is gone. What is the significance of that exchange? Having the knife on the ground and then having it gone taken away?
• 31:33
  Andy Nelson: Well, right before she goes out to her porch, she's, like, sitting there and looking at herself in the mirror, and we do see a a figure kind of walk by and kind of look in at her. And so presumably, it was the widow's friend who'd kind of helped kind of connect her and Ong. Yeah. The henchman. Yeah.
• 31:54
  And I don't know. I I also was just like, did he plant it there as a hint to her that we're coming after you? Was it meant for her to take, and they were gonna try to frame her in some way? I wasn't really sure what the whole point of that was. It was a strange thing.
• 32:13
  It seemed to only be there to just give the audience a a sense of impending threat, I guess. It but it didn't seem that well placed in the story.
• 32:24
  Pete Wright: I'm really glad that you don't have a whole lot more than I did out of it. It felt fuzzy to me. Yeah. That does lead us to the final exchange between husband and wife, where he says, if you love someone, you can forgive them of anything. He says, they kiss.
• 32:41
  He looks at her. He says, do you do you know, tell me honestly, do you love me? And she says, no. I can't do it. I can't.
• 32:47
  I love the man I just killed. And he stands and walks away. She goes outside, tears on her face. And this is where things as you said, in the 1929 movie, the movie ends. Presumably, the play ends somewhere along those lines too.
• 33:04
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. I'm guessing.
• 33:05
  Pete Wright: There was frustration from the Hays Code that she got away in those other movies, that she was the one who was the criminal in this case, and and she got off without punishment. In order to fix that in this movie, this version of the movie, Betty Davis walks out across the yard, walks through a little gate, and who's on the other side of the gate, but the henchman and the other woman, the Eurasian, and they stab her and kill her with the ornate knife and lay her down in the bushes on the outside of the wall. And as they walk around the corner, there's a police officer there who doesn't ever see the body, but walks away with them as if he knows everything. Very fuzzy. Final shot is a great shot, a a train up from the body in the bushes to the party still going on inside the house.
• 34:00
  Love that shot. I think the justification of making this movie more wholesome by more murder is is not appealing to me as a rationalization, but I actually find the end of this movie very dark.
• 34:17
  Andy Nelson: I absolutely think it's dark. It's it's more interesting because I mean, yeah, it's the Hays Code. They couldn't let this woman get away. And we haven't mentioned the fact that it's very loosely based. I mean, mom's play is loosely based on the Ethel Proudlock case, which took place in 1911.
• 34:36
  She was tried for murder very much the same sort of thing. She she killed a man who, as it turned out, it sounds like was exactly kind of what they said. She was in a jealous rage because he was ending their affair. But she said, I he came and he was trying to rape me and I did it out of self defense. It happened in, they were living in Kuala Lumpur in, at the time, Malay, and they found her guilty and sentenced to hanging, and then they retried her and she ended up or I I don't know if they even retried her, but the sultan pardoned her.
• 35:17
  And so she and her family basically fled the country, went to England, ended up she moved to Florida where she ended up dying in the seventies. So it's loosely based on the on the case. It's based on something that actually happened, but even then, the Hays code could not let it play out that way. They had to have her killed because she was guilty of adultery, and she was guilty of murder. Even though now we have a Eurasian character kill her, I guess, because she's not I don't know.
• 35:52
  I don't know how the Hays Code justifies it. She's like, she's not the main character. She's, you know, of another race. I don't know how they found the justification to say, well, we still get to end with a murder and somebody's satisfied because they're killed. I assume it's because the cop
• 36:07
  Pete Wright: She also she yeah. The cop's there. I that's what that's what I think, that that she was walked away by the cops so clearly that she's not she doesn't get away either. Yeah. Everyone's busted.
• 36:17
  Murder begets murder. Crimes of passion begets crimes of passion. And that's actually another thing that that I think really works with the movie is that it ends. She kills Jeffrey out of passion. Other woman kills Betty Davis, crime of passion.
• 36:31
  There's a nice little sort of completion.
• 36:34
  Andy Nelson: Well and and another thing that I liked is, you know, as as much as I don't like Gail Sundegard playing the part, I thought there was an interesting element here that I think it was Ong who actually talked about, like, I I can't remember what Howard said to him, but something about, like, the Chinese way or, you you know, this is is this the way that you people do things? When when he finds out that Ong is working on behalf of I mean, he's Ong is his assistant. He's his assistant, but he's essentially facilitating this blackmail to get $10,000 for this letter. And as it turns out, Ong is getting 2,000 of that 10. But what I found so interesting is Ong's response to that.
• 37:15
  It's like it's things that we learned from you. I'm like, okay. So I like that we're we're at least finding ways to kind of pin the blame on on these, colonizers, you know, and I thought that was actually an interesting element to it. I I hated Ong in the best possible way. Right?
• 37:33
  Pete Wright: That the the way that character is played, the way he he smiles all the time, like, found myself just in in the perfect amount of diabolical, you're you're the worst kind of portrayal. He's he's really good.
• 37:48
  Andy Nelson: Right. Not hating the actor or the performance. You're hating the character because that's exactly what we're supposed to It's exactly
• 37:53
  Pete Wright: what we're supposed to do. Yeah. He was great. He was really, really great.
• 37:57
  Andy Nelson: I liked him quite a bit. That was, Sen Jung who played Ong who would go on to be, Charlie Chan. No. He was Jimmy Chan in the Charlie Chan films. So he was kind of prominent.
• 38:10
  And I liked the ending, as you were saying. Like, all of that, I think, plays in a really interesting way. Like, I love how dark it is that missus Hammond gets away with blackmail with this $10,000, and then she still goes and kills the woman who killed her husband. Like, I thought that was fantastic. I I personally really could have used without that final shot of the police.
• 38:34
  Like, it just I mean, that felt the most Hays code of all of us. Like, well, we have to make sure that they're stopped. And I'm like, ugh. But
• 38:42
  Pete Wright: This is that this is the the conflict that comes when you're watching a movie that is at once dated, incredibly dated, and also timeless. Right? Like, are some really timeless sort of bits of intrigue at work in this movie that that work really, really well. Blackmail and and all the sorts of subversion that goes along with that. And yet the stuff that is dated just sticks out horribly.
• 39:11
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. There's some really rough stuff.
• 39:13
  Pete Wright: You know? And and reportedly, I'm I don't know. I I read that Betty Davis said that what did what did she say about the Hays Code? That she said it it took this it sucked the story out of movies. Oh, I've got that quote completely wrong.
• 39:29
  She but she was on I think she was she was on team nineteen twenty nine.
• 39:34
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. I I I think in general, everybody kind of got frustrated with these often inane, requirements that the Hays Code made these directors and producers change in their film in order to pass whatever thing that they felt they needed to kind of pass in order to make it sanitary. It's ridiculous. Bette Davis, I I know I talked about kind of my struggles with Bette Davis the beginning. Like, I really couldn't buy into her at all.
• 40:01
  But I will say, like, through the rest of it, I thought she did a great job. And it's interesting because she apparently suggested to William Wyler, who I mean, they had worked before. It's not like this is a new relationship. But she had said, I don't think I should look at him, at her husband, when I confess that you still love the man I murdered. Like that whole thing.
• 40:22
  She's like, I can't I shouldn't look at him. She said, no woman would be able to do that when they admit something like that. And Wyler disagreed. She walked off the set and then but came back and did it his way, and she would always say her version would have been better. But I don't know.
• 40:38
  I thought it was fine. Like, I bought into I bought into her confession at that particular point. I feel like enough had happened where I could I could see her doing that. Did what did you think?
• 40:50
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Because I well, she wasn't admitting it for the first time. Right? It's it it wasn't it it wasn't news in in that way. I I think her just coming to terms with it like she was just punched in the gut and having it erupt in a fit of honesty is like, right into his face was very powerful.
• 41:14
  And I and I don't I I think it's no woman would do that. Come on. No woman. Surely not everyone was kung fu fighting. Right?
• 41:24
  Like, it no woman. No. A white
• 41:28
  Andy Nelson: man thing to say.
• 41:29
  Pete Wright: What a white man thing to say. Yeah.
• 41:33
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Well, I enjoyed the film. I I think that there's a lot of fun stuff going on with it. I think that it has its issues, but, and it certainly isn't my favorite of of Bette Davis's films. But I think in the scope of things, I enjoyed it.
• 41:49
  I I enjoyed what they were doing with this story.
• 41:53
  Pete Wright: Yeah. But it sounds like you'd return to '29 before '40. I would. I I I mean, I well, one thing
• 41:59
  Andy Nelson: we haven't talked about other than the the interesting way that Wyler kind of shot that kind of like the the POV. The cinematography is gorgeous in this. Like, there are some shots where she's like, the way that he plays with moonlight, and we see a lot of that with the moon Oh, a lot of coming in and out of the clouds and everything. And and there's a shot a few shots of her looking out and through, like, the screen that's on their veranda. And it just, like, all those lines on her and everything.
• 42:28
  It's just, like, such great, like, film noir sorts of looks. Like, the cinematography in this was really, really beautiful. I loved the look throughout.
• 42:37
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Me too. I thought it was, I mean, it just used contrast in such a beautiful way to to sort of move us through these emotional states. I thought it looked great. Looked looked so good.
• 42:50
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. William Wyler. What is the other film that they did together?
• 42:55
  Pete Wright: Little Foxes? Have we
• 42:57
  Andy Nelson: talked about Wyler with anything? Wuthering Heights. We did that 1939 in our best pictures of 1939 series. And you're right, the Little Foxes account for some reason, I forgot he did that as well. Best Years of Our Lives.
• 43:12
  So we've talked about a number of number of his films.
• 43:15
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Funny Girl, Ben Hur, Tale of the Christ.
• 43:18
  Andy Nelson: I I really enjoy Wyler and kind of the stuff he does. I think that he's a strong director. And I mean, I think who wrote the script for this? It wasn't him. It was, Howard e Coke.
• 43:32
  But, like, I I would assume kind of like the two of them working to kind of craft something that expanded on the play. Because again, if the play largely is what you get out of the 1929 film, they definitely expanded it a little bit. I, you know, I think other than kind of the expository, let's sit down and and lay all this out, I definitely enjoy what they did here.
• 43:55
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I it's a really solid experience with some very dated quibbles. Yeah. If you want a a really interesting snap of Hollywood's attention to empire and race and class as, like, systemic decay by way of imperialism, this is a great movie to look at. And and and and I think it it it is a nice little bookmark to how we looked at those relationships at the time.
• 44:27
  Complicated antihero. I still don't feel like I'm I am at peace with who I'm supposed to run with in this movie overall. I think I'm still landing on Joyce.
• 44:37
  Andy Nelson: But I would argue that they're saying that it's Leslie. But I think through today's eyes, it it definitely feels like there's some confusion between her and Howard Joyce. So Yeah. Oh, well. Oh, well.
• 44:51
  Well, I guess that's it. So we will be right back. But first, our credits.
• 45:06
  Pete Wright: The next reel is a production of True Story FM, engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Dimitriks, Wonderland, Riverlume, Oriole Novella, and Eli Cattlin. Andy usually finds all the stats for the awards and numbers at b-numbers.com, boxofficemojo.com, imdb.com, and wikipedia.org. Find the show at truestory.fm. And if your app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show. Okay.
• 45:43
  Sequels and remakes. Was there was there stuff after this?
• 45:46
  Andy Nelson: There was stuff after, and there was stuff before. And a lot of it is because this is based on a play. So starting with the play, they performed it. There was repertoire performances, all the way up, like, 1954. It was revived in '95 and again in 2007.
• 46:03
  Film versions, the 1929 and the 1940, seem to be the only English language versions. But then there's a French version in 1930, a German version in 1931, a Spanish version also in 1931, and an Italian version in 1931, and then a Russian version in 1987. On top of that, then you have, it's not this film or this the play, but the Ethel Proudlock case was referenced in the 1977 film East of Elephant Rock. So there's plenty of film versions. On TV, there were six TV anthology series adaptations in 1950, '52, two in '56, 1960, 1969, and then a made for TV movie starring Lee Remick made in 1982.
• 46:54
  Last but not least, back to the stage, somebody adapted the letter into a musical called The Bloomers in 2000, and then the Santa Fe Opera commissioned an operatic version in 2009. So
• 47:08
  Pete Wright: Wow. It's a story that apparently people really are drawn to. It's funny to me that after all of all of these versions, this is the only one I've seen.
• 47:18
  Andy Nelson: Well, yeah. But I mean, well, one, I I I don't know if many of those are, like, really well known versions. So I guess I I don't know if I'm that surprised. You know?
• 47:29
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I am very curious now. I'm I'm definitely going to I'm gonna check out 29, especially because it sounds so easily easy to digest. Sixty five minutes. Yeah.
• 47:41
  But I'm I am I'm really torn on the decision to open with the exposition versus actually showing us the story as they do in '29 as you tell it? I'm curious about that.
• 47:54
  Andy Nelson: I really preferred the opening in the 1940 version. Like, that's it's such a great way to open a film, you know, and and then it leaves it mysterious. Like, there's no mystery about what's going on in the 1929 version. The only mystery is, will she be able to get away with it? Is really kind of what we get out of that one.
• 48:13
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Right? Interesting. Yeah. Okay.
• 48:17
  It's award season, Andy. How did it do? Did it bring home the gold?
• 48:22
  Andy Nelson: Well, it did have five wins with nine other nominations. At the Oscars, it was popular. It had seven Oscar nominations, but it didn't win any of them. Best picture, lost to Rebecca. Best actress, Betty Davis, lost to Ginger Rogers and Kitty Foil.
• 48:36
  Best supporting actor, James Stevenson, lost to Walter Brennan in the Westerner, and sadly, he would die, like, shortly after all of this. Best director, lost to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath. Best cinematography, Black and White, lost to Rebecca. Best film editing, lost to this is a film that in some way, I want us to work into a series at some point. A film called Northwest Mounted Police.
• 49:00
  About a cop who goes up to Canada to solve something. Yeah. And last but not least, best musical score but lost to Pinocchio. At the National Board of Review, James Stevenson was nominated for best acting and won, sharing it with a film he is also in shining victory. The New York Film Critics Circle Awards, best director, was nominated but lost to John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath and The Long Voyage Home, and best actor, but lost to Charlie Charles Chaplin for The Great Dictator, who apparently refused to accept his award for some reason.
• 49:30
  And of course, we love talking about the PhotoPlay Awards. That's right. It won four PhotoPlay Awards, best pictures of the month in February 1940, 1940. It won best performances of the month for February. Bette Davis, James Stevenson, and Herbert Marshall all won.
• 49:47
  Pete Wright: So, yeah, there you go. Okay.
• 49:49
  Andy Nelson: Not bad. Not too bad.
• 49:50
  Pete Wright: Especially those those photo play awards. Just it makes me happy and warm every time we hear it.
• 49:56
  Andy Nelson: Oh, I love it.
• 49:57
  Pete Wright: How did it do at the box office? Do you have the money?
• 50:08
  Andy Nelson: Oh, here we are, Pete. Yet another in Pete's line of films choices that provide no data. Other than the fact that the film premiered on 11/14/1940, I couldn't find anything else about its budget or how well it did. The only other hint I have is from Wikipedia saying, this film was a huge hit with the public, but that's also not something that provides a reference to back it up. So I guess we'll never know.
• 50:34
  Pete Wright: I we are gonna be doing some sort of a report at the end of the full annual season. This is how many of my movies versus how many of your movies actually have budget numbers. Because you're start you're getting it dangerously close to gaslighting territory. Yet another of Pete's picks.
• 50:51
  Andy Nelson: That's right.
• 50:52
  Pete Wright: That's right. Please. Alright. Well, I'm glad we talked about this movie. I'm glad we have it in the catalog.
• 50:59
  I'm glad we're adding it to our Betty Davis collection, which is available. You could see all of the movies right in one handy page. We'll put a link to the Betty Davis movies we've talked about over on the website in the show notes.
• 51:12
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. Check them out. Lots of great movies to discuss and watch, so check those ones out as well. And that is it for today's conversation, everyone.
• 51:20
  Next week, we are kicking off a brand new series of Pete's design, true lies, stories of real people who just can't seem to tell the truth for one reason or another. Now we're kicking things off with Mariel Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me? Starring Melissa McCarthy and Richard e Grant. Alright. Let's do the ratings.
• 51:37
  Pete Wright: Letterbox.com. Andrew, letterbox.com/thenextreal. That's where you can find all of the ratings and reviews for all the films we talked about across the next real family of film shows, and we're gonna do it. We're gonna put stars, stars, and hearts on this movie. What are you gonna do?
• 51:51
  It's not it doesn't sound like it's gonna be a five star and a heart barn burner for either of us.
• 51:55
  Andy Nelson: No. And it's not even four. It's three stars and a heart. Like, I enjoyed it. I think there are a lot of elements in it that I found enjoyable.
• 52:04
  I didn't love it, but I had a fun time watching it. And so I think adding a heart to it is absolutely fine too. Three stars and a heart.
• 52:12
  Pete Wright: I was gonna feel guilty if my three star and a heart met your four star and a heart. I feel redeemed at sticking with three stars. It's a it's a solid movie with just enough quibbles. Mostly, a movie that gives me such joy to go watch other movies about the same story is is probably not a five star movie right off the bat. So
• 52:33
  Andy Nelson: three stars in a heart. It is interesting. And and, you know, reading about the actual case it was based on, like, I wonder if there's material there for somebody else to go and try to tell more of the actual story. Like, I'm curious, you know? Yeah.
• 52:46
  If this is kind of it, like, there's not much more to it, but, yeah, it could be interesting. So For sure. Well, anyway, that, averages out to three stars and a heart over on our account at Letterboxd, which you can find at the next reel. You can find me there at Soda Creek Film. You can find Pete there at pete wright.
• 53:03
  So what did you think about the letter? We would love to hear your thoughts. Hop into the Show Talk channel over in our Discord community, where we will be talking about the movie this week. When the
• 53:11
  Pete Wright: movie ends our conversation begins. Letterbox giveth Andrew. Andrew. Andrew. Okay, Pito.
• 53:33
  Andrew.
• 53:36
  Andy Nelson: What are you gonna do? I went right up the middle two and a half with watched by black heart emoji. The lighting is sexy. Benny Davis gunning a man down is sexy. But do you know what's not sexy?
• 53:49
  Yellow face and racist stereotypes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 53:56
  Pete Wright: There are there are a lot of the reviews that lean on that particular moment. Right? The he tried to make love to me, and I shot him. The gestalt of this movie. I do like Elly's three star.
• 54:11
  This movie sets a precedent that if Bette Davis doesn't kill a man in the first five minutes of every other movie she's in, then I'm going to be severely disappointed. Bette Davis has gots to kill a guy. She's gots to. That's the the rule. Yep.
• 54:25
  Andy Nelson: That's good stuff.
• 54:27
  Pete Wright: Thanks, Letterboxd.