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katieloubelle
Reviews
The Sisters (1938)
Geez, Louise!
Wow. This is the embodiment of the phrase "Women's Picture." In case you don't know, a Woman's Picture was this thing rampant from the late '30's to the '40's that starred Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Irene Dunne, or a handfull of other female stars of the same stature. Very sappy, very melodramatic, but with enough redeeming value to still be loads of fun 65 years later.
Still, I maintain that Bette Davis was always much better when she played a bitch. I mean really. Don't you want to chuck something at poor old Louise in this movie? When she looks all smug at Errol Flynn (who is quite tasty in this) when he wants to know how she bought their Charlie Brown Christmast tree and goes "With pennies and nickles!" or something to that effect with her voice going up about as high as possible with the phrase "pennies and nickles!" Ugh, you want to hit her.
But aside from that, a very good movie, although one must wonder why Warner Bros. kept insisting that Jane Bryan looked like someone who could be related to Bette Davis, since she played her sister in this and "Marked Woman," and she played her illegitimate daughter in "The Old Maid."
Of Human Bondage (1934)
First great Bette Davis movie...
I've been reading many of the comments about this movie from my fellow IMDB-ers and one thing has come up in several messages. The fact that people do not like the quality of the film. As in the fact that it is over 65 years old, black-and-white, crackly and probably not in the best condition. Do not hold this against the movie, y'all! It's not the movie's fault it hasn't aged well. And if you cannot bear the less-than-"Titanic" quality of the picture itself, you probably should not be watching a movie made in 1934.
With that said, I must say that this is one of my favorite movies, for one reason and one reason only. Bette Davis. After watching it a few times, I fast-forward through the parts with Leslie Howard and his "chums" at school, or him and his various "good girl" girlfriends, or whatever else. Bette is the only redeeming quality in a movie that suffered at the hands of the Hayes Code, a less-than-perfect script, etc. She is wonderful in this as the bitch of all time without the obligitory heart of gold, Mildred, as she chews up the scenery (and gets away with it) for the first time. Who can't love her in the scene where she chants "You cad, you dirty swine! I never cared for you, not once..." and so on. I am a big one for melodrama, and if you are too, I highly reccomend this movie.
I truly believe that if you love a movie, you can mock it. I love this movie, but boy can I mock it too! Y'all know the scene where she's really whored-up and goes to Leslie Howard with a really charming hacking cough. He looks down her throat and she croaks, "It's not me lungs...is it?" Sure, Mildred. He can see all the way down your throat to your lungs. Actually, Mildred had syphillis, but in the old movies, syphillis and TB were really pretty interchangable.