Rent Mr. Skeffington (1944)

Epic Soap. - Mr. Skeffington review by Steve

This film is so tightly knotted to its theme of vanity that it eventually becomes a moral fable. Bette Davis plays a high society coquette who marries a modest but rich businessman (Claude Rains) to keep her crooked brother out of jail. Her marriage is no impediment to having a good time in the company of fast men. So Mr. Skeffington toils without love, filling her life with riches.

The unfaithful wife loses her looks after a bout of diphtheria, and learns valuable life lessons. By 1944, in a lifetime of heavy smoking, Bette looked middle aged and she is hardly convincing as a famous beauty. In fact there is a premonition of Baby Jane Hudson in her heavy makeup, even before the illness. But credit to Davis for allowing her later grotesque appearance.

She dominates the film, and haunts your nightmares. Rains gives a more subtle and touching performance as her rejected husband, a Jewish man who takes his daughter to Germany as the Nazis come to power. The film starts just before WWI and concludes with the world about to be again consumed by war. Bette gets to wear a compilation of classic frocks from the first half of the century.

There's quite a lot of humour (from Julius & Philip Epstein). The witty script keeps the drama fairly superficial. Almost nothing is done with the theme of anti-semitism. This is an epochal film in the history of classic cinema, because it was the final release of Bette's hated contract with Warner Brothers. And while not her best, it's a significant entry in that body of work.