The Old Maid (1939)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Really Surprised!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

If there was a hit play on Broadway, you know that in the mid to late 1930's and 40's that Bette Davis was looking at as a potential vehicle for herself. There was "The Petrified Forest", "Jezebel", "Dark Victory", "The Little Foxes" and "The Man Who Came to Dinner", and one that received the Pulitzer prize, this play by Zoe Atkins, gloriously filmed in the greatest year that the movies have ever known. Not all spinsters start off as old maids, and in the case of Bette's Charlotte, she was a lovely young woman who made one "mistake" with the now deceased civil war hero George Brent. Only the audience is aware that she has had a baby by him, taking care of her as a foundling, but only to stand by as her cousin Delia (Miriam Hopkins) arranges to adopt the little girl. Forgetting who raised her growing up, the young Tina (Jane Bryan) grows to hate her "Aunt Charlotte", now sour looking and stern, while Delia hasn't seemed to age at all.It's obvious that the egotistical Hopkins cared more about image than reality, while Davis doesn't give a crap, only wanting to play the part as written. That's not to dismiss Hopkins, giving a sincere performance, only changing her hair style slightly to indicate the passage of time. Donald Crisp as an old family friend is superb, while Louise Fazenda's old nurse delightfully loyal.This is excellent on every level, and I mark Davis's performance as even better than the one she managed to be nominated for in a year of hits, "Dark Victory". Davis doesn't even mind a shadow covering half her face, as if during this scene (where she practices disciplining Bryan) to indicate the shadow of a life her existence has become. I could watch all of Davis's classics back to back with only a break for sleep, and never be tired of them.

... and George Brent as Clem Spender is that kind of guy. We don't see much of Clem himself except at the beginning, but the film is pretty much about the aftershocks of him being the love of the lives of the two main characters, cousins Delia (Miriam Hopkins) and Charlotte (Bette Davis).The time is the beginning of the Civil War, in the north, far enough away from the battlefields to the extent that if this war will ever touch the lives of the characters it will be through death on those battlefields. Clem has apparently gone off to make his fortune so he can marry Delia, whom he claims to love - heck I think he believes that himself. But Delia is practical. After waiting for two years she decides to marry "a Ralston" - Jim Ralston to be exact, good provider from a family of bankers, not hard on the eyes, and probably so predictable Delia will spend the rest of their mutual lives with her feet asleep.Clem comes back on the wedding day, and Charlotte, who we are told is several years younger than Delia, goes down to the station to try to get Clem to stay away from the wedding, that Delia says it is too late. When Delia and Clem meet, at her house before the wedding, you understand she did not want to see Clem because she still loves him, she will always love him, although she doesn't say that. When an allegedly broken hearted Clem exits the house, Charlotte, also secretly in love with Clem goes after him. Now remember this is the production code era and so you see NOTHING in the way of passion between them. But they did have sex because suddenly Charlotte is going out west for her health, and when she returns she is running a home for war orphans, with her own child by that one night with Clem, Tina, hidden among the bunch.Delia being told about the existence of the child, and that it was Clem's is the undoing of both cousins. Delia, in the jealousy that she cannot even admit to herself, sabotages Charlotte's wedding by telling a lie to the groom, gets Tina and Charlotte to move into her house after her husband dies, gets Charlotte to let her adopt Tina, and in the end the once vivacious beautiful young Charlotte turns into an "old maid", somebody that even her own daughter has no use for other than to pity her. The person she ultimately calls "mummy" is Delia.Now Davis' acting here is raw, everything is out there. She IS that vivacious young woman at the beginning of the film, she IS that bitter spinster in the end - partly because she knows what Delia has taken from her and that Delia refuses to admit her own motivations. Hopkins plays her part more subdued, as though Delia cannot admit to herself that all of this has been about Clem, that it was he she has always loved, whose child she wanted and has managed to maneuver herself into a position where she gets her.Now being an "old maid" was considered a horrible fate for a woman until about 1970, but these two women are living on the fumes of a memory, of the adventurous handsome but broke Clem as a young man. His death as a soldier in the Civil War freezes him in time in that state. They neither ever seem to get that had either of them got their wishes they would have ended up married to an emotionally ambiguous man, a man who just can't seem to succeed, and prolonged poverty never made anybody happy.This is a great film even if it is full of overdoing the punishment of sin production code style for everybody involved. Case in point, Bette Davis' Charlotte ages to the point that she looks ten years older than the actual age of her character for the sin of one night of out of wedlock passion with somebody she tragically loved, while Miriam Hopkins' Delia has hardly aged a day over the film's course, even though all the while she's been taking a wrecking ball to her cousin's life.

You'll notice right off towards the last part of this film the resemblance Bette Davis has to her Now Voyager character. Along with the similar storyline.Now this one isn't the same as Voyager but it has very similar themes. The character who doesn't get married for various reasons. The "Old Maid" quality in the main character. This doesn't get the praise Voyager does but it stands on its own quite easily.I have quite a few little complaints but they're minor ones. I think first and foremost...How does any mother continually let her sister take all the credit for her being her child's real mother? I think most might say well...it was the times. I don't buy that. I think for this film they amp up the melodrama to the point where it's like...gimme a break. Another thing I don't get is how the doctor in this. He's the only one who knows whose the baby's really mother is and in the time span this film is suppose to cover...he doesn't age a cent. LOL he looks the same 20 years before. Lastly, what really irks me is how, close to end, they blame Charlotte for being a crone all these years and how difficult she's been to live with. I mean the sister badgers her endlessly into making sure no-one knows who the real mother is. How would any girl feel if someone took over her child's life? For me, with the minor quibbles, this was a good film. Another Bette Davis winner fer sure. Other than, IMO, the weak ending it succeeded in it's job. To entertain me for an hour and a half.

A spinster named Charlotte giving up her life for a girl named Tina. Sounds like the great "Now, Voyager." It's not as good but is passable.Davis plays a woman settling down to a grim spinsterhood after having an illegitimate child. She stays with relative Miriam Hopkins and the two battle it out as the years pass.The film is hurt by the fact that the vast majority of scenes take place in the house where the two are residing.The child, Tina, refers to Davis as Aunt Charlotte and in her bitterness, Davis is highly critical of her. In response, Tina often says nasty things to her.The theme of women giving up their lives to keep a major secret of illegitimacy hidden has often been shown in films. This time it's adequately done to the fine acting of Davis and Hopkins.