A Filmmaker's Review: "The Letter" (1940)

“The Letter” is one of the great Bette Davis films in which she portrays a woman with a conscience but also a woman with a serious attitude, totally subverting the norms of the day with her leading lady status and her will to do what she wanted when she wanted. A true powerful woman in real life, Bette Davis makes no excuses otherwise in “The Letter” as she portrays a woman gone mad with a conscience that she has killed a man. Denying it all the way out of the fact she states it was an act of self-defence, some are not fully convinced and when a letter is found under the strange suspicions of the court, the prosecution and the defence are both trying to get their hands on it for different reasons. It breaks the entire case wide open and shakes the whole thing up left, right and centre. Bette Davis is in peril, but can she prove she is innocent? Not to the court, but to herself? What does her conscience say about the self-defence situation and what really went on that one night when she took that gun and shot him? It’s more complicated than we think.

Bette Davis has always been a great actress and I don’t think I have ever watched a film with her in it that I can even consider thoroughly average let alone ‘bad’. She has always given her best work and I love the films where she portrays this two-faced machiavellian, powerful woman with a string of people there simply waiting on her. She has this classiness of a lady but she bites back when someone tells her she’s wrong. Yet, she is also overwhelmed easily, she has an emotional side and she can sympathise with other women. She has a strange double-sided attitude to her which makes her almost perfect to play any character let alone a character who killed someone and is now trying to garner sympathy from those who don’t believe her self-defence claims.

Another thing I loved about the film is the acting by Herbert Marshall. He plays Leslie’s (Bette Davis) husband. His acting was brilliant because it was perfectly juxtaposed to her’s. She was powerful with a tender caution for becoming overwhelmed and emotional, but he is the opposite. He seems to be tender and caring on the outside, but also resourceful in trying his best to make sure his wife walks away from this free and easy. The price he has to pay for that is gigantic but there is something in it for him - his wife does not go to jail, but maybe what happens instead could be a lot worse. These are only some of the things that go through his head at the trial. He must think of every available opportunity whilst she sits on the stand watching these men run around after her. Truly, it is something to be admired by both of them. They worked really well together and I think that is partly why this film was a huge success.

Finally, I want to say that upon seeing this, I thought that this was possibly one of Bette Davis’s greatest performances. Many people like to disagree with me but it proves to us a few things: number one: she can play the machiavellian political woman who has a key for making men run around after her and yet, fear her massively. Number two: she has a talent for lying when it is convenient for her and her friends, even to those she is truly close to. Number three: her acting is so brilliant that she can play such a range of characters and I will argue with anyone that she has never in her career repeated the same character twice. She proves on seeking out new, vibrant and complex characters with confusing and hidden motives. Characters with alibis that seem to fall apart but she keeps holding them together. Out of the two of them I can truly say with utter conviction that Bette Davis was a far better actress than Joan Crawford. I think Bette Davis just had more talent to play more characters.