A Grande Mentira

To my mind this film is perfect - a classic example of what the studio system of the golden years of Hollywood could achieve. Strong direction, witty dialogue, beautiful music, sublime cinematography, crisp editing, gorgeous production design and costuming, brilliant performances - every element of this film is perfect.

Add to all that the daring (for its day) story-line, Bette Davis at the height of her dramatic powers and at her most beautiful, and Mary Astor delivering what I think is one of the great screen performances of all time, and you have a very special film indeed.

Although the film may seem to have dated elements, especially in the depiction of the African-American characters, if you let yourself watch the film with 1941 eyes you will be richly rewarded. Besides which the wonderful Hattie McDaniel brings so much depth to what could have been a simple stereotype.

As you can tell, I love this film. I understand Bette Davis and Mary Astor loved working together - and you can see that on the screen. The scenes between the two of them are electric, with so much being said beyond the words. Thank God Astor won an Oscar for her work here. She truly deserved it.

A rich woman Maggie (Bette Davis) is in love with Peter Van Allen (George Brent) who is married to famous concert pianist Sandra Kovak (Mary Astor). Them Van Allen finds out his marriage to Kovak isn't legal--they got married before her divorce was final. So he marries Maggie which infuriates Kovak. Then Kovak discovers she's pregnant and Van Allen disappears when his plane crashes in the jungle...

As you can see this is more than a little silly. The above plot just covers the first 30 minutes or so--the story gets even more ridiculous. This is wildly overly melodramatic and has an ending where reality totally disappears, but production values, music and performances pull it over.

It was lushly made (Warners Brothers spared no expense on this one) and there's some great music here--LOVE the piano solos that Astor is supposedly playing. Brent is good in his role--handsome and intelligent. Davis is (as always) good--she ALMOST overdoes it but is pulled back. Astor is GREAT--she deservedly won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this. She takes her role and runs with it--she's playing an almost totally evil, self-absorbed woman and enjoys it.

So it IS silly but worth seeing. I watched the film with a smirk on my face the whole time but I DID keep watching. I give it a 7.

THE GREAT LIE (Warner Brothers, 1941) directed by Edmund Goulding, teams Bette Davis and George Brent for the tenth time. Though DARK VICTORY (1939) is often hailed as their finest achievement on film, THE GREAT LIE is most memorable not so much for their fine chemistry, but for Mary Astor, whose performance not only steals it from her leading performers but won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her fine achievement playing the other woman to her husband.

The story opens with Peter Van Allen (George Brent), an aviator and wealthy playboy, married to Sandra Kovak (Mary Astor), a famous concert pianist. Called by his attorney, Jeffrey H. Thompson (Jerome Cowan), Peter is given the news he's not legally married to Sandra. Her divorce from her previous husband has not been finalized at the time of their wedding. Though Peter is willing to wed her all over again, Sandra refuses to marry the day of her upcoming concert in Philadelphia and insists their wedding will have to be postponed to another date. Finding her career more important than their lives together, Peter, who earlier had taken his plane to Maryland to visit with his former fiancée, Maggie Patterson (Bette Davis), her outbursts prevent him from giving her the news of his freedom. Eventually Maggie learns of the matter and becomes his wife after all. Later Peter is called away on an assignment to Brazil. During his absence, Maggie meets with Sandra in New York with startling news she's pregnant with Pete's child and intends on getting him back. Receiving news of Peter being killed in an airplane crash in the jungle, Maggie comes to Sandra with a cash settlement allowing her to have her baby in a secluded Arizona ranch on the condition she can return to Maryland and raise the child as her own. Time passes. Maggie is now the "mother" of little Pete while Sandra is free to go on her world concert tours. With the surprise news of Pete having survived the crash and returning home to her, their lives together are happy until Sandra returns. Also in the supporting cast are Lucile Watson (Aunt Ada); Hattie McDaniel (Violet); Grant Mitchell (Joshua Mason); J. Farrell MacDonald (Doctor Ferguson) and Sam McDaniel (Jefferson).

Though an interesting concept, THE GREAT LIE might have failed had it not been for its three veteran performers making the story better for what it is. George Brent plays his usual caught between two women husband while Bette Davis and Mary Astor are equally matched as "friendly" rivals out for the affection of the man they both love. The year 1941 proved to be a turning point for Mary Astor's career with this and her outstanding role opposite Humphrey Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON being the two movies she is best remembered. As much as I always felt Astor should have at least been nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her wonderful performance in DODSWORTH (United Artists, 1936), at least the award she won for THE GREAT LIE makes up for that oversight. The truth about THE GREAT LIE is how Mary Astor makes her self-centered role so likable. Along with her shorter hair-cut to appear older yet appealing to her character without losing her attractiveness, her high point is not so much her piano playing to Tchaikowski's Piano Concerto # 1 in B Flat Minor, but how her tense and slightly amusing confrontation with her rival and former husband, good enough for that well-deserved Academy Award win.

Available on both video cassette and DVD format, THE GREAT LIE can be seen occasionally on Turner Classic Movies cable channel. (***)

The Great Lie (1941)

This is really a fabulous mixture of great movie themes, and it pulls it together to make its own amazing statement about fidelity and love. And class. And pre-war America, seemingly isolated but actually trapped by world events.

Within ten minutes there is first an echo of My Man Godfrey (George Brent in this case making a more mainstream Powell) and then a swoop down for a taste of Gone with the Wind or even closer, Jezebel (the plantation south, even though it's 1940 or so). Then it's a melodrama straight up, and tragedy, and even if the plot is improbable, you go with it and get swept away.

Brent plays Pete, a man caught between two women, both of money, but one cosmopolitan and used to being in charge, and one a lively, warm woman living a more earthy life. At the start it seems Pete is married to the urbane one, a concert pianist, Sandra, played with typical poise and ice by Mary Astor (compare this to her more famous role in The Maltese Falcon from the same year). She's a professional woman, in charge of her life, and, lately, Pete's. She wants independence and culture, and man with his feet on the ground.

But Brent's country girl, an ex-love (and true love, it seems) Maggie is played to perfection by Bette Davis. The music here, and the support cast is African American, which makes for a more heart warming, and wrenching, background. He pays a visit to Maggie the day after his wedding (for reasons that slowly clarify) and the dynamic is set. And the twists begin. We have a contemporary drama between recognizable stereotypes as World War II looms for the U.S.

Early on, Sandra asks Pete after his visit to Maggie, "Did you get it?" He says, "What?" Sexual innuendo intact, the Hays code chaffing, she clarifies, "The air?" What a great simple example of how movies so often played brilliantly with innuendo because the code wouldn't allow a straighter interplay.

Director Edmund Goulding is not as well known as some of his contemporaries, but he has a few masterpieces in his lot, including the Bette Davis Dark Victory and the later Razor's Edge. For me, The Great Lie is maybe short of perfect--the plot does intrude on our sense of suspending disbelief--but it's really fast, moving, well written, and well directed. No question.

"The Great Lie" provides an example of what the Warner

Bros. stock company could produce during the early 40s.

Bette Davis is her usual strong character, George Brent

his standard wooden but creditable personality, and Mary

Astor in a surprisingly fiery turn, is a performance which

contributes a winning balance.

The best scenes are confrontations and interactions between Davis and Astor, and they play the dramatics for

all they're worth.

It's an entertaining film, with an array of fine character

actors (including scene-stealing Hattie McDaniel) to bolster the proceedings. Max Steiner's score is on hand to

add atmosphere to the action.