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Every year between 1938 and 1942 Bette Davis received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. That is an astounding feat when you think about it. Who else can proclaim five consecutive years in a row? Katharine Hepburn, most likely, and possibly Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, but that’s still a very exclusive club. And each performance was a different and unique side to Davis’ talents and charms as an actress. Jezebel was a complicated portrait of a rebellious but still proper southern belle, Dark Victory was a nice girl with an unfortunate fate, Now, Voyager was a movie where she transformed physically, spiritually and emotionally, The Little Foxes was pure acid. The Letter is yet another color and texture of Davis’ palette.
Another W. Somerset Maugham adaptation, The Letter tells the story of a married woman who kills the man she’s been having an affair with, and cons everyone into believing otherwise, until the letter shows up, which leads to a cover up, an unfair trial and, ultimately, the murder of Davis’ character. Davis does a brilliant job balancing between making everyone believe her story, and being a frigidly cold, unremorseful killer. She’s a brittle high society woman who we are waiting to watch break under the tremendous pressures. She never breaks in the traditional sense, only tries to con us more, even when she has been caught. She met with a great female opposition in Gale Sondergaard as the wife of the man Davis killed. Sondergaard is a viper quietly waiting to strike. Her face is a mask. There is no emotion beneath the surface but a coiled rage and hatred. She doesn’t strike until the very end, but she strikes with a great force. Everyone else in the cast does an admirable job, but none really standout the way that the two females do.
The Letter also features two great sequences: the opening and closing murders. The opening is a beguiling montage of a still and peaceful night that is interrupted by six gunshots. The ending features Davis walking from the backyard into the streets, where she is cornered by Sondergaard and an accomplice, stabbed, and dies in the street. All the while the party in the house celebrating her not guilty verdict for the opening murder continues to rage on, totally oblivious to the noir-like justice that has just happened.
