THE LETTER
US, 1940, 95 minutes, Black and white.
Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Freda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard, Cecil Kellaway.
Directed by William Wyler.
The Letter is based on a play by celebrated British author, W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham, who had lived in Malaysia and the tropics for many years, wrote a number of stories centred in these exotic places. One of his most places is Rain which was filmed with Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford and, as Miss Sadie Thompson, Rita Hayworth. He was also a writer of more social and light comedies.
The film was nominated for Oscars in most of the main categories in 1940, though it did not win any. It was the year of Rebecca and The Philadelphia Story.
William Wyler had directed Bette Davis to an Oscar in Jezebel two years earlier. Bette Davis suits the part admirably of a woman accused of murder but who defends herself by saying it was self-defence. However, the wife of the murdered man has a letter from the Bette Davis character inviting him to a rendezvous at the time that he was killed. Her lawyer then has to defend her. Herbert Marshall plays his usual supportive role as the husband. James Stephenson is a lawyer. Gale Sondergaard, who had won the first Oscar for best supporting actress in 1936 for Anthony Adverse, is the sinister Mrs Hammond.
William Wyler was one of the most successful of Hollywood directors. He had many successes in the 1930s with These Three, Jezebel. During the 1940s he was to win Oscars for Mrs Miniver in 1942 and The Best Years Of Our Lives in 1946. He directed many performers in their Oscar-winning roles including Greer Garson, Teresa Wright, Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress), Charlton Heston and Hugh Griffith (Ben Hur) for which he won another Oscar, and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl).
There was a remake for television in the early 1980s with Lee Remick in the Bette Davis role and Jack Thompson in the Herbert Marshall role.
1. The impact of this film as a drama, melodrama? Its strengths?
2. The quality of the film as a Bette Davis vehicle? Its particular characteristics?
3. The impact of the Warner Bros.' style of the forties? Black and white photography, sets and locations, musical score, etc.?
4. The theme of audience sympathy and antipathy? Truth, appearances? The insight into a tormented person?
5. The impact of the opening and its melodramatic overtones? The initial impact on the audience and the conclusions of the audience? The incident as it was talked about by various characters? Varying interpretations? Lies and the truth?
6. The importance of the Singapore atmosphere? Colonies, away from home? The pressures and artificial atmosphere of an English colony? The colonists and their relationship to the native born? The environment for a story of passion and deceit? A woman like Lesley Crosbie thriving in this particular atmosphere?
7. The character of Lesley Crosbie? Initial impact, suspicion, sympathy? As gradually revealed? Her own story of her innocence and her victimization? The gradual revelation of her contriving, power and dominance, lies? Her capacity for destruction? The insight into an evil woman, her reactions to people, her husband, her Counsel, her victim's wife?
8. The film's presentation of the process of her husband's discovery of the truth? What kind of person in himself, the effect of the incident on him, his belief in his wife, helping her, with the letter, his reaction to the truth?
9. Her Counsel? His belief and his disbelief in her? His abstracting from the truth? Working for her?
10. The significance of the letter? As a symbol of Lesley Crosbie? Her wanting to buy it? Her husband getting the money for it? The significance of the victim's wife having the letter?
11. Audience response to the trial? Its interest, its ironies? The husband's impact on the trial?
12. Lesley Crosbie's final flaunting of the truth to her husband? The famous Bette Davis scene? The melodrama and the ending?
13. The native wife and her revenge? Her seeing the Counsel, her attitude towards her husband, to Lesley Crosbie? The encounters in the darkness? Her murdering of Lesley? Dramatic irony? The only decision left for Lesley?
14. Why has this film been so popular? And considered a classic?
