L'insoumise

Very good film from director Wyler, although it is its star, Bette Davis, upon whom its high quality mostly rests. This is perhaps Davis' best performance that I've seen. She plays a spoiled Southern belle whose fiancé (Henry Fonda) leaves her after a socially embarrassing event. As he leaves her, she swears that he will return, as he has in the past. And he does, one year later, with his new Northern wife in tow. The film does wonders with its historical setting, New Orleans a short while before the Civil War. A year before Gone with the Wind cooed over the fancy lives and manners of the Ante Bellum South, Jezebel was exploring them in more detail, and with a more intelligent eye. Also lurking about is the threat of Yellow Fever, which devastated New Orleans in the 1830s and is starting to grow rampant again. Another thing I really liked about Jezebel was its ending. Perhaps when it was released in 1938 there would be a feeling that Davis' character has turned a corner and has become more selfless, but to me her motives seemed awfully suspicious. That ambiguity is fascinating. Along with the leads, Donald Crisp and George Brent give fine supporting performances, and Max Steiner's score is one of the best of its era. 9/10.

The American South has always had an aura of sadness around it. I don't know why exactly. This film tends to reinforce that perception. Characters start off with high hopes for the future, only to succumb to some unfortunate fate, as a direct result of their Southern roots.

In pre-Civil War New Orleans, Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) is a wealthy young woman, engaged to respected banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda). But Julie is strong-willed, independent, and impetuous, traits considered unwomanly by that era's Southern aristocracy. Against Preston's wishes, Julie wears a red dress, instead of the customary white, to a gala ball. This event sets up the rest of the story.

While the support cast in "Jezebel" is fine, especially Fay Bainter, the film would not be the same without Bette Davis. I just can't see anyone else in the role of Julie. Davis' performance and the film's setting are what make this film so memorable. The costumes, the production design, the cinematography, and the music combine to convey a genuine sense of the antebellum South, with its stately manners that conceal narrow-mindedness and barbaric "chivalry".

Normally, I don't care for films whose subject matter is long ago history. But "Jezebel" is an exception, because it is so well made. I guess it is the tone of the film that really got my attention. The stately beauty of that time and place masks an underlying sadness, as a prelude to tragedy. Some might call it melodrama. But to me, that's just good drama.

... because in the Bible Jezebel was a worshipper of Baal who encouraged brutality against all who opposed her. Bette Davis as 1852 southern belle Jule Marsden, just seems at first intent on subverting the will of her fiance Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda) to her own. Their battle of wills escalates until she wears a red dress to a ball when all single women are supposed to dress in white. An unexplainable southern custom with probably silly roots, just like everybody calling a slave "Uncle Kato" when he is NOT your relative, he is forced labor. But I digress. Preston and Julie break up over the issue of the red dress, and Preston leaves New Orleans and goes to New York to take a job in a sister bank to try and forget. Who knew that banks had branches in the 1850s?

Preston is gone for a year. Julie finds her pride is cold comfort, and when Preston returns she intends to beg his forgiveness. Unfortunately, life is what happens when you are making plans and Preston returns from New York with a wife - Amy (Margaret Sullivan). Julie is devastated because marriage in 1850 is pretty much permanent, and yet she plans to break up this marriage which she considers illegitimate at least partially because Amy is a Yankee. This is where the plot goes a bit haywire. Julie does lots of disruptive things, but she is just plain terrible at executing her so-called cunning plan.

Did Preston marry Amy on the rebound and just intended to stick with it because he is a southern gentleman? Is Julie perhaps obsessed at this point rather than in love - like Scarlet O'Hara was with Ashley Wilkes - but just figured that out sooner? I don't know. The actors never tip their hand. Maybe because of astute direction, maybe because of a lack of direction so they don't know themselves.

I'd say this film is reverse synergy - the parts are greater than the whole. Bette Davis' acting was surely worthy of her Oscar, because her acting transcends the meandering plot. The dress looks red in the ballroom scene in spite of the black and white photography. All of the small individual scenes are so well done, and you have great supporting performances in the persons of Fay Bainter, George Brent, and Donald Crisp. I'd give the plot just a 5/10. All of the other things I mentioned raises my appraisal to a 7/10. An unpopular opinion I know.

Jezebel was Bette Davis's consolation prize for losing the Scarlett O'Hara sweepstakes. Considering the sacrifice that the title character makes in this film, it is fitting and proper that Davis got this role because she could have had Scarlett, but she wouldn't make Gone With the Wind if it included Errol Flynn as Rhett Butler.

Julie Marsden is as willful and and spiteful a southern belle as Scarlett O'Hara ever could be. But Scarlett would never deliberately violate the code the way Julie does and wear that red dress to a cotillion. Just simply not done in the best families.

Bette Davis is Julie and while she's going to be married to the very proper Henry Fonda, she likes the idea that she can still turn the head of every young blade in New Orleans. Especially George Brent's head as the dashing Buck Cantrell.

When Fonda doesn't jump at her beck and call he prefers doing business to catering to her whims she decides on a daring move. This is a woman who cannot stand not being the center of attention. She wears a red dress to a cotillion when polite society dictates that all the unmarried young ladies wear white. When she does, New Orleans society shuns her as effectively as the Amish can and Davis retreats to her plantation upriver.

Fonda goes north and returns after a while to New Orleans with Margaret Lindsay who he is now married to. An insult our southern belle won't put up with. Davis sets in motion a string of events that results in a lot of tragedy.

I have to say that just a description of the plot seems a bit ridiculous at times, but Bette Davis does make this whole thing quite believable. She won her second Oscar for Best Actress in this film and as her aunt who occasionally gives her a reality check every now and then Fay Bainter was named Best Supporting Actress of 1938.

Fonda and Brent are fine in their parts, but they are in support of Bette Davis in a Bette Davis film. Another performance I liked is that of Donald Crisp as the doctor who fights a lot of prejudice and ignorance in New Orleans in trying to deal with yellow fever.

Looming over all of the film is the knowledge we have that this society will come crashing down in another eight years or so in events so well told in Gone With the Wind. This film should be seen back to back with Gone With the Wind as a view of southern society.

This was Bette Davis's first film with director William Wyler who she admired above all other directors. Davis was not generous with praise for colleagues so any kind words towards one are really something. Apparently Wyler did have the magic touch in handling Bette.

Jezebel is one of Bette Davis's finest films, maybe not the finest, but definitely right up there. Unlike Davis's first Oscar for Dangerous which she said was a consolation for not winning for Of Human Bondage, this one she was proud of. And we're proud of it too.

Bette Davis dominates the whole movie with a mesmerizing performance,which earned her a second Oscar. As the love of her life we find a young and handsome Henry Fonda.Davis,who sometimes overacted gloriously, is kept more subdued by master director William Wyler. Her performance is the better for it.George Brent,playing the other male lead, has rarely been better.As the southerner unable to change his obsolete ways,he's a marvel.The musical score by Max Steiner is one of his best and adds to the brilliant depiction of a bygone era. Depiction of African-Americans in movies from this era are often very racist, but I found some scenes were they were portrayed more sympathetic than in other movies of the thirties. Jezebel is one of the best movies I have seen with Bette Davis.