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Restraint is never a word that can be bandied about with Robert Aldrich, but Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a true spectacle of Grand Guignol camp histrionics. As a spiritual cousin to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is the ghastly eccentric to that film’s richer, scarier pedigree. There’s not as much going on between the ears of this film as Baby Jane, but Sweet Charlotte is one hell of an entertaining piece of trash.
Since this story is also based on a piece of writing by Henry Farrell, the basic gist of Sweet Charlotte’s structure borrows heavily from Baby Jane. There’s a flashback to a horrific event, here the murder of Charlotte’s married lover (Bruce Dern) in her family’s summerhouse during a party. Charlotte discovers her lover’s body, complete with missing hand and head, and returns to the party in a bloodstained dress. Everyone assumes she did it, and her father (Victor Buono, going broad even for him) uses his vast political and economic influence to keep her protected long after his death.
Everyone leaves Charlotte (Bette Davis, in full-on bug-eyed, screeching manic glory) alone to be a town eccentric in her swampy antebellum mansion, a thing that practically screams Southern Gothic decadence in full bloom. That is, they leave her alone until 1964 when the Louisiana Highway Commission intends to demolish her house and build a new highway through the property. Charlotte calls upon her cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland, underplaying at first before revving up in the final stretch) to help her battle the Highway Commission and keep the house.
From there, Sweet Charlotte dolls out a series of barely contained secrets, colorful supporting characters, and the atmosphere is that of overheated pulp. The dialog is purple prose, the tone is consistently set at hysteria, and there are some lovely visuals at play here. Check the way Aldrich uses expressionistic lighting and shadows to frame Olivia de Havilland at several key moments, or the way he uses a Vaseline-like filter in a scene where Bette Davis is being gaslit. The entire thing is completely ridiculous and permanently set at eleven, but it’s just so much damn fun!
The entire cast is clearly having a ball getting to go full-tilt crazy throughout. Davis actually modulates her character quite well as she goes brittle and breaks over and over again. She gets shouty and screeching in several spots, but she also lets her large eyes do the heavy-lifting in a few key scenes. Agnes Moorehead chews through several soundstages worth of scenery, and she’s a treat to watch as the butch housekeeper. Joseph Cotten could do oily like no one’s business, and his molasses rich presence here is fun. Mary Astor gives her final screen performance as an old woman with dark secrets waiting to die, and she gives the role more pathos than it probably deserves. With only two scenes, Astor makes for a haunted presence that lingers long after the film is over.
But Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is stolen from all of these stellar actors by Olivia de Havilland. Her role was originally intended for Joan Crawford, and Sweet Charlotte echoes and recycling of elements from Baby Jane is entirely intentional. Depending on which version of the story you believe, or maybe they’re all a bit true, Crawford ended up leaving the production shortly after filming started, either through her own volition or she was fired. Davis called in a favor from her close friend de Havilland, and the role is one of her more memorable for what she brings to it. After playing the good girl so often, it’s practically perverse and shocking to watch de Havilland go bad here. Her cosmopolitan exterior and prim manners are a delightful bait-and-switch, just like variations of the exterior-interior dichotomy were in The Heiress or Gone With the Wind.
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte’s considerable charms are somewhat hampered by the overindulgent running time, a persistent problem with Aldrich’s films. Sweet Charlotte is overlong, even more ornate and ostentatious than Baby Jane, and broadly kitsch and creepy by turns in documenting Charlotte’s violent break from sanity. Graphic for its time, potently strange to view nowadays, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is ball of bayou potboiler batshit craziness.
