'CHARLOTTE" REVISITED

"Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte"

HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964). Director: Robert Aldrich.

NOTE: My original review read as follows: 

"She's not really crazy. She just acts that way because people expect it of her."

This film seems to get better with the passage of time. Originally this was meant to be a follow up to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? re-teaming Bette Davis with Joan Crawford (who would have been great in the picture and should have completed it) but Crawford quit the production and Olivia de Havilland stepped in -- with happy results. As others have noted, watching sweet "Miss Melanie" of Gone With the Wind doing the things that de Havilland does as Miriam gives it all an added kick.

Olivia De Havilland and Joseph Cotten

Charlotte Hollis (Bette Davis) lives alone in a forlorn mansion that is about to be torn down to make way for a bridge. She calls on the only family she has left -- cousin Miriam Deering (de Havilland) -- to come and help her, but Miriam has other things on her mind. For most of her life Charlotte has been the chief suspect in the mutilation murder of her lover, John Mayhew (Bruce Dern), a supposedly sensitive soul who wrote a love song to Charlotte (the title tune) and put it in a music box. Charlotte is haunted by her lost love and by her feeling that it was her father (Victor Buono in a bravura turn) who killed him.

Bette Davis as Charlotte

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte takes a cast of golden age stars and character actors and places them in a classy production with a sop to the teen audience via the graphic, well-executed (pun intended) murder scene that almost opens the picture, and which is actually bloodier than the Psycho murder of 1960 (we never do learn what became of the poor man's head and hand, which were apparently carried off by the murderer). This alone predisposed many 1964 critics to dismiss the film out of hand, although the rest of the film is entirely tasteful. Not only tasteful, but extremely well done. Aldrich's direction and handling of the suspense scenes is far superior to his work on Baby Jane. Joseph Biroc's cinematography is consistently outstanding and the production values first-rate -- this is one good-looking movie. (Frank) DeVol's musical score is extremely effective. One could argue that Baby Jane had a kind of cheapjack feel to it, but that is definitely not true of Charlotte. The screenplay by Henry Farrell and Lukas Heller, while it may at one point borrow a plot gambit from Diabolique, is suspenseful and full of great dialogue. Most scenes, such as a murder on a staircase and the bitter arguments between the neurotic principals, are handled with great dramatic flair.

Olivia de Havilland

And then there's the acting. Davis gives one of her finest latter-day performances, getting across the pathos of the character as well as her mania. (Her pantomime at the end as she reads a letter with tremendously important information in it is marvelous.) As Miriam, Olivia de Havilland is on target from her entrance until the final moments. Witness her wonderful delivery of her rejoinder to Dr. Bayliss. "You were always free with your compliments. It was your ... intentions... that were a little vague." As the charming if reptilian Bayliss Joseph Cotten offers another dead-on characterization. Agnes Moorehead almost walks off with the picture as the unfortunate housekeeper Velma. Mary Astor, Cecil Kellaway, and others offer highly superior supporting performances.

Hush...Hush deserves to be recognized as a certified classic.

Verdict: Fascinating! ****.

2020 UPDATE: Oddly, although the plot line isn't as original as in Baby Jane, Hush ... Hush is, I believe, the better picture, even if I might take one half star away from my verdict. Although she is very good, there is no way Davis would ever have received an Oscar nomination for this film as she did for Baby Jane -- her scene on the staircase when she supposedly descends into gibbering madness is more comical than anything else. It doesn't make much sense that Charlotte would stay in town where everyone thought she was a cleaver-wielding lunatic just to cover up for her father (who she thinks is the real murderer) -- she could have gone anywhere and everyone would have still thought "she done it." Then we have the question of the murder itself. It takes a great deal of strength to cut off a man's hand with a meat cleaver with just one blow, not to mention a head with a few whacks. How could anyone think Charlotte could have done it, let alone the real killer, maniacal strength notwithstanding? (And why on earth did the killer walk off with the head and hand?) Also the two villains of the story had to count on an awful lot happening, on Charlotte falling in with their plans, for things to work out as they do. On close inspection the whole Gaslight plot seems highly suspect. But these are quibbles -- as the movie is extremely entertaining if you just suspend disbelief. A scene with a corpse falling sideways and threatening to reveal itself to a reporter at the door of the mansion is terrific!

Verdict: Diabolical story of resentment and revenge --- lots of classy if ghoulish fun. ***1/2.  

BLACK SUNDAY (1977)

Bruce Dern and Marthe Keller

BLACK SUNDAY (1977). Director: John Frankenheimer.

German-Arab Dahlia (Marthe Keller) is a member of the terrorist group Black September. She has been able to manipulate her lover, a bitter Viet Nam vet named Lander (Bruce Dern), into helping her in a plot to kill thousands of Americans. She hopes to send a message to the U.S. to stop aiding Israel. A taped message that she had planned to release to the media after the event has been recovered following a raid so that now the government knows something deadly is planned but doesn't know what. (The fact that Lander is one of the pilots of the Goodyear blimp for the Superbowl should give you a clue.) Israeli agent Kabakov (Robert Shaw) and FBI man Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver) join forces with others to find this woman -- whom Kabakov should have killed during the raid but didn't -- and stop her plan before she can kill over 83,000 people -- and the President -- at the Superbowl in Miami.

Robert Shaw

Black Sunday is a thinking man's thriller, the kind they generally don't make anymore, in that it has some great action set pieces and lots of suspense, but it also has interesting characters and heroes who are not quite superhuman. The film is over two hours long but never boring as it follows the deadly exploits of the daring terrorist duo and their equally daring pursuers, with speed boat chases, telephone bombs, hotel shoot-outs and a climax involving a blimp, a helicopter, a sub-machine gun wielded all too well by Dahlia, and a bomb that will fire thousands of metal pellets into a crowd of cheering and clueless fans if something isn't done to prevent it.

Marthe Keller 

The acting in the film could not be bettered. Marthe Keller of Fedora gives another excellent and passionate performance as the terrorist, and Bruce Dern [Coming Home] is simply superb as the tormented and vengeful vet who spent months in a POW camp and whose wife left him for another man when he finally returned home. Robert Shaw is similarly on target, as are supporting performances from Weaver, Steven Keats [The Last Dinosaur] as another ill-fated Israeli agent, and others. There's a horrifying scene in a warehouse when the evil duo test their weapon on an innocent caretaker who only thinks they're going to take his picture, and many other memorable moments. John Williams' score is also quite effective.

This is based on a novel by Thomas Harris. I always thought it was far superior to his over-rated Silence of the Lambs and that this earlier film is far superior to the film version of Lambs. Back in 1977, terrorist plots like this were strictly the stuff of movies and books, not to mention James Bond, but 9/11 certainly changed that notion, as we soon realized, sadly, that now anything was possible ...

Verdict: Terrific thriller with a great plot and excellent performances. ***1/2. 

THINGS I'VE SAID, BUT PROBABLY SHOULDN'T HAVE Bruce Dern

THINGS I'VE SAID, BUT PROBABLY SHOULDN'T HAVE: An Unrepentant Memoir. Bruce Dern with Christopher Fryer and Robert Crane. John Wiley and Sons; 2007.

Bruce Dern has had a long career as a working actor, mostly in films, with occasional television work, and sometimes he's given the lead role, as in Silent Running. He was married to actress Diane Ladd (who directed him in a movie where she apparently hurled out her bitterness over a bad marriage which he admits was all his fault) and is the father of Laura Dern. He apparently had a weird relationship with his wealthy family. The films Dern covers the most include John Frankenheimer's Black Sunday, Coming Home (in which he was especially excellent), The King of Marvin Gardens, The Great Gatsby (with Robert Redford), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot, and Monster, but he doesn't neglect more embarrassing assignments such as The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, more power to him. I also admire him for coming out in support of Elia Kazan, because "three quarters of the room did not stand up" when the director received an honorary Oscar. Appalled by this, Dern asks "What were Kazan's choices?" (One can only imagine what Kazan's detractors would have done were they in the same situation). Of course, Dern can be as guilty of egomania and diva behavior as anyone. In an unintentionally comical anecdote Dern writes how he and very beautiful co-star Maud Adams supposedly had to fight to keep their hands off of each other off-set during filming of the erotic film Tattoo, but one senses Adams wasn't really that interested in the first place. While Dern does talk about the changes in the movie business, different approaches to acting, and other things of interest, the book isn't well-edited, and even two other writers can't make Things I've Said especially coherent. There is no linear, chronological progression; Dern bounces all over the lot. Long, long conversations from decades in the past are reproduced verbatim (either Dern has an encyclopedic memory or he is merely capturing the gist of these conversations -- even so), and some of his memories seem a little suspicious. (I simply can't believe some of the comments he attributes to Alfred Hitchcock.)  Most criminally, Dern mentions Bette Davis with admiration more than once, but says virtually nothing about Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, or about Joan Crawford's participation before she walked off the movie. Inquiring minds want to know! Dern can be forgiven his "name-dropping," however, because these were all people that he knew and worked with.

Verdict: Good actor, mediocre book. **1/2.

COMING HOME

Jon Voight and Jane Fonda

COMING HOME (1978). Director: Hal Ashby.

Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda of Joy House) is married to Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern of Family Plot), who is fighting in Vietnam. During his absence she decides to volunteer at a military hospital where injured soldiers are being treated and recuperating. One of those soldiers, Luke (Jon Voight of National Treasure) is an angry fellow with paralyzed legs, and someone Sally used to go to school with. The two are drawn into a friendship, and then a physical and emotional love affair, and then Bob comes home ... Although Coming Home couldn't have been made during Hollywood's Golden Age for obvious reasons [and very differing attitudes], one still suspects that this could have been a truly great film had it been crafted by, say, William Wyler. Hal Ashby [Shampoo] isn't quite up to the task, and some important scenes have less dramatic heft because of it. Still Coming Home does examine the varying attitudes of the country during the Vietnam conflict, the experiences of some soldiers when they come home bent and broken, the changing role of women and housewives, and adds a poignant romantic dilemma to all of it as well. The script sort of lets you down just when it most needs to be working, unfortunately. Jane Fonda and Jon Voight are okay -- Voight has a particularly good scene when he's talking to college students -- but Dern, in the least sympathetic role [until the end] pretty much walks off with the picture. Penelope Milford makes an impression as Sally's new friend, Vi, and Robert Carradine does the best he can with the under-written role of her mentally disturbed veteran brother, Billy. The soundtrack consists of some evocative seventies rock music, often used quite adroitly. A sub-plot in which Sally tries to get the women who run the hospital newspaper to run articles that may actually be helpful to the recovering vets and is rebuffed is important but dropped too quickly. Dern was also the murder victim in Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Ashby also directed Being There with Peter Sellers.

Verdict: Just misses being a great movie. ***.

FAMILY PLOT

FAMILY PLOT (1976). Director: Alfred Hitchcock. 

Hitchcock's final film out of fifty-four may not be a masterpiece, but it is a very entertaining, under-rated movie with some clever twists and an interesting plot. Elderly and wealthy Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbit) wants the [phony] medium, Blanche (Barbara Harris) to locate the illegitimate child, now forty, whom her sister gave up at birth so she can make him her heir. Blanche enlists her cab-driving boyfriend, George (Bruce Dern) to help with the search, but is unaware that the heir, now known as Arthur Adamson (William Devane) and his girlfriend, Fran (Karen Black) are behind a series of big-ticket kidnappings -- we learn this early on -- and think Blanche and George are after them for their crimes. Ernest Lehman's excellent script brings both couples and all four main characters to vivid life, and all four actors deliver superlative performances. Nesbit and Ed Lauter as an associate of Arthur's are also splendid. The relationship and banter between Blanche and George is particularly amusing. As this is a light-hearted thriller, even the scene when the couple are nearly killed driving down a winding mountain road when the brakes fail is played as much for laughs as for scares. Handsome production, well-photographed by Leonard J. South. Fran and Arthur live in a very beautiful, exquisitely decorated townhouse. It's interesting to note that only Lehman's and Hitchcock's names are shown durng the opening credits; the actors' names aren't seen until the cast list scrawl at the very end! 

Verdict: A swell way to end a long and distinguished career, although the actors may not have been amused. ***.