La solterona

With Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner himself in charge of the production, "The Old Maid" is a fine example of what that studio's "stock company" was able to produce in the late '30s and early '40s. Here is Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, assisted by George Brent and Donald Crisp acting up a storm a very soapy piece of melodrama, and making it all very engrossing. Based on Zoe Akins' Pulitzer Prize play and Edith Wharton's novel, this drama of sacrifice, deception, and raging emotions is given a superlative treatment by this impressive company. The film even has the services of Max Steiner's score, underlying every scene with original and adapted source material. Edmund Goulding's direction is sure-footed and he has managed to curb histrionic accesses of the two stars nicely; their acting is quite restrained, yet powerful. Whatever sparks flew between the two ladies off-screen may be justified by what on-screen legacy is left for all to appreciate. Further, the drama depicts the limited and restrictive social/class mores of the period, undoubtedly imported from strict European values.

This film would be just another period melodrama: over-scored,sugar-coated, and glossy-slick (especially for a Warners' film) -- except for two things: Bette Davis and Bette Davis.

Bette is truly a revelation in this film, which required her to age twenty years in the flesh but many more than that in spirit - as she turned from a fresh, extremely sympathetic young girl to an "old maid" of forty or so, a bitter, intimidating woman.

Her ability to integrate completely disparate human traits into one cohesive character is amazing - a must see.

Get out your handkerchiefs! Bette Davis, the queen of black-and-white tearjerkers, outdoes herself in The Old Maid. I dare anyone to make it through this classic without bawling. Bette Davis starts the movie in love with her cousin's fiancé, George Brent. Her frivolous cousin, Miriam Hopkins, got tired of waiting for George to come home from the war, so she marries someone else. When George comes back and finds out, he's devastated but gets comforted by Bette. He was her favorite leading man, after all.

Years later, George has died in battle and Bette never remarried. She runs an orphanage for children whose fathers died in the war, in order to hide her own illegitimate daughter from George. When Miriam, now a widow as well, comes with her own little girl and lives with Bette, a bedroom ritual starts. Miriam's daughter says, "Goodnight Mummy. Goodnight Aunt Charlotte," to Bette. Bette's daughter starts saying it, too. It pains Bette terribly to hear her child call Miriam "Mummy", let alone to be called "Aunt Charlotte." I'm sure you can imagine the tearjerker scenes that follow.

I always said it was a tragedy that Bette didn't win her Oscar for this movie. At the Hot Toasty Rag, she was the one and only person to gain a triple nomination in the same category. In 1939, she was nominated for Dark Victory, The Old Maid, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, winning the Rag for the latter. While she absolutely deserved a Rag for playing Aunt Charlotte, her performance as Queen Elizabeth was remarkable.

If you like sacrificing mother stories like Stella Dallas, you'll love this one. You'll get to see some beautiful costumes, great age makeup on the leading ladies as the story travels through the decades, and you'll go through at least one box of Kleenexes as Bette tears up your heart. And if you like the dynamic of Bette and Miriam fighting over the same man, check out their follow-up Old Acquaintance.

One of Bette Davis' best films and a great weepie; an unashamed Victorian melodrama but made with great panache and played with all the stops out. When Miriam Hopkins jilts her financee George Brent, cousin Bette gives herself to him and gets pregnant. When Brent goes off and gets himself killed Davis disappears out West so she can have the baby, raise her as an orphan and save what vestige of honour she has left. Years later, when Hopkins discovers the truth, she takes the child to be raised as her own while Davis lurks on the sidelines as old maid Aunt Charlotte. (This is the movie in which Davis gets to utter the immortal lines on her daughter's wedding night, 'Tonight she belongs to me. Tonight I want her to call ME mother!'). The film has a good pedigree. The original play won the Pulitzer Prize and was based in turn on an Edith Wharton novel. Tosh it may well be, but it is irresistible.

Superb soap opera takes place from the 1860s to the 1880s. Miriam Hopkins spurns long-time fiancee George Brent to marry another man. Her cousin, Bette Davis, also loves Brent and "comforts" him before he goes off to war. He dies in the war and leaves her pregnant. She secretly has the baby and tells nobody except Hopkins. Hopkins, now a rich widow, convinces Davis to let her adopt the child so she will have a name. She does and watches her child grow up treating Hopkins like her mother and Davis with contempt as an old maid.

The story is very sudsy but the script has wonderful, literate dialogue and the picture is very elaborately made. But what really puts the picture across is the superb acting by Hopkins and Davis. They both hated each other passionately off screen but you'd never know it on screen. The scenes when they're friends or rivals are just great--every single line rings true and they play their roles to the hilt. A real surprise is seeing Hopkins play a sweet woman at the end--she certainly wasn't like that in real life! And the very last scene in the movie will bring a tear to your eye--just Bette Davis' reaction to something really hits.

A great film--don't miss it! A must if you're a Bette Davis fan.