Vivo per il mio amore

I actually liked this picture. The story loosely parallels that of Madame Butterfly...and if you see it in that light, it doesn't seem all that over the top. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the writer had the idea of updating Madame Butterfly...I visually these guys in wrinkled shirtsleeves bending over their old Royal typewriters chomping on cigars..."Yeah...Madame Butterfly...that's the ticket...only she's not a prostitute, that won't work....but a fallen woman...but a noble one....she's a bootlegger's widow...yeah! that's the ticket...she marries a playboy, he dumps her, marries someone else...she waits for him....keep the faithful maid in the plot...has a kid....the husband comes back...remarried....she sends the kid off to live with her ex and then offs herself....yeah! It'll be a hit! Not a dry in the house."

I actually realized the similarity only in the last 15 minutes of the film when I got that awful yet familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach which always anticipates a mother's pending self-sacrifice. When Butterfly sees the American wife for the first time standing outside her little house on hill in Japan and realizes who she is and why she's there...it's really heartbreaking.

Anyway, despite the melodrama, the performances That Certain Woman are really very good, especially Davis's. She was a very intelligent actress, and understood what the camera would catch.

So, maybe you don't need to OWN this video, but I wouldn't disregard it entirely. Then go out and rent Frédéric Mitterrand's beautiful 1995 film of the opera. Heart-wrenching...

In spite of it's impressive leads and the usually sure handed direction of Edmund Goulding That Certain Kind of Women is a lumbering, mawkish an implausible melodrama. Disjointed at times you get the feeling a reels missing.

Where do we begin. Ex-moll Mary Donnell is trying to go straight as an executive secretary for Lloyd Rogers who though married has a thing for Mary. Mary though falls for Jack Merrrick Jr. (Henry Fonda) much to the chagrin of Jack Sr. (Donald Crisp) who gets sonny's marriage annulled by playing hardball with her past. The two part he remarries and she has his kid. Years pass, Rogers dies and leaves her a ton of cash. Junior comes back finds out and vows to leave his crippled wife who pays a visit to Mary before they run off. Enough already.

Your drowning in suds in no time in this 30s chick flic that never finds a way to amp up the passion with characters that are tender sensitive and dull beyond belief. Davis stands around looking cow eyed most of the way while Fonda wimps about and Crisp remains stone like. Tina Louise rolls in on a wheelchair in the last act as wife "Flipp" and wrestles with Davis in another cloying moment of tear jerk to see who will make the greater sacrifice. No contest, the audience has.

Mary Donnell (Bette Davis) has a checkered past as a gangster's young widow. Now, she's lawyer Lloyd Rogers' secretary. She falls for wealthy playboy client Jack Merrick (Henry Fonda) and they get a quickie marriage. His father disapproves of her.

It's a melodrama with star Bette Davis and future star Henry Fonda. Bette is able to keep the story moving with her superior acting. Fonda is a little miscast although this is very early in his career. He hasn't settled into his everyman genuineness. He's still a good romantic lead. He isn't able to bring out the flaws in his character. In the end, this is mostly about Bette and she makes this work.

Yes, it's a ridiculous, confusing plot. Yes, the characterizations are clichéd archetypes. The portrayal of her son shows a child yanked around with what we would see today as neglect, or even cruelty. But David fully commits, and elevates the entire enterprise. She is showcased, and provides a subtlety and range of emotion far beyond the script, e.g., she makes her interaction with the child actor believable. Fonda hangs in there, but his character doesn't give him much to work with. And some scenes rise to her level -- especially the conversation with Anita Louise in her wheelchair. We see the characters reacting to one another in an unlikely and awkward plot contrivance, and simultaneously see two skilled actresses working together to make all this believable and even moving. Plus, the wheelchair action is ... remarkable. Davis looks great, beautifully photographed, well-lit, with the famous eyes showcased repeatedly, to great effect. The finale has to be seen to be believed. What the involved viewer expected - and dreaded - is suddenly revealed to have taken place, and the effect is -- hilarious relief. Certainly not a great film, but essential for those who appreciate and admire Davis.

Audiences will groan at the character of Mary Donnell. Bette Davis is normally looking out for number one--and she's definitely her good old self in the first half of the movie. The widow of a gangster, Donnell has become a super-competent legal secretary for a respected attorney in a big firm. She fends off unwanted press attention and generally handles herself quite well as a tough single girl in the big city.

She becomes the mistress of her married boss at the law firm (although the Hays Office undoubtedly required the removal of any breath of sexual content here, it should be pretty obvious to all what is going on). In the second half of the movie, which focusses on Jack Merrick (Henry Fonda), whom Donnell has always loved, she achieves peaks of self-sacrifice that will send you staggering to the bathroom to throw up.

This is the sort of film that gives soap opera a bad name.