Dark Victory [1939]

Dark Victory is an embarrassment of riches, an unashamedly tearful melodrama that features an absolutely electrifying, compelling, tour de force, tear-jerking performance from Bette Davis as Judith Traherne. Davis is in top form here, playing the doomed socialite with a neurotic, disturbed, and formidable intensity; she encapsulates the screen being as redoubtable as ever, with Judith insisting on her dignity even as a grave illness she seems to have beaten returns with an unbeatable vengeance.

Plagued by eye trouble, severe headaches, and a numbness in her arm, Judith is encouraged to meet with renowned doctor and brain surgeon Frederick Steele (George Brent. Judith knows deep down that something is terribly wrong, but she's a feisty strong-willed young woman who believes in just getting on with life. Consequently, she has slipped into a state of perpetual denial. Once Dr. Steele forces her to face the truth about her illness, Judith begins to fall in love with the handsome and dedicated doctor, admiring his affable and sensitive ways.

Surgery is obviously the only option, and at first, things seem to go well, but her crippling disease eventually comes back to haunt her and she's given only months to live. Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Judith's secretary and best friend, conspires with Frederick to keep the seriousness of Judith's her illness from her. They both do it, not out of spite or selfishness, but out of a gesture of love, and a desire to see Judith happy in her remaining months.

Judith gravitates between a whimsical carefree attitude towards her plight and a kind of stoic concern that things will be eventually work out all right for her. She friskily wrangles with her beloved doggies while still in bed, then bounces into the day in her silk pantsuit pajamas, all the while exchanging familiar niceties. It isn't until she learns the deadly ramifications of her illness that she starts to go off the rails, boozing with the playboys, smoking too many cigarettes, and soliciting the attentions of a smitten proletarian stable hand (Humphrey Bogart).

Dark Victory, for all it's foreboding and depressing themes, is actually quite uplifting and is also deftly paced and smartly energetic. Judith gets a new lease on life when she falls in love with Frederick and even though certain death draws near, nothing can stop her from continuing her savvy business deals, keeping prospective suitor Ronald Reagan on drunken hand, and leaping atop a galloping steed. Mawkish sentimentality, the hairpin turns of the plot, and even the not-so-subtle changes of heart by the central characters, never bog down the film or make the story too heavy-handed and overly maudlin.

Dark Victory ended up being one of Bette's biggest box office hits, and one can easily see why. This is a towering and commanding performance of unabashed melodrama and one of the most definitive pictures of her long and distinguished career. You never quite get used to seeing Bette this way, and you wish she'd been given even more chances to shine and play such a complex, intricate, and nuanced character as Judith Traherne.

Davis and Fitzgerald are far and away the best thing in "Dark Victory." The script by Casey Robinson, based on the play by George Emerson Brewer, Jr. and Bertram Block, is as manipulative a tear jerker as you are ever going to see come out of Hollywood. Brent's performance is okay, although his character is a tad too saintly, and Bogart's accent is strange but passable, but Ronald Reagan's performance as Alec Hamin, who tends to get a bit tipsy at the parties, is pretty laughable. However, as Judith Traherne, Bette Davis certainly redeems most of the flaws of this 1939 film directed by Edmund Goulding. "Dark Victory" was remade as a TV movie with Elizabeth Montgomery, and while the script was vastly improved, even the talented Montgomery could not touch Davis' performance. This is one of her fan's favorite films with a memorable final scene during which they get to cry their eyes out.