Though we are out of Humphrey Bogart movies for the moment, we still had Bette Davis on hand tonight in "A Stolen Life" (1946), and in fact it was a double dose of Davis because she played twin sisters. This one was a real potboiler, another Sirkian melodrama involving a love triangle of which the sisters comprise two thirds.
The movie starts with sister Kate exiting a taxicab on an island off New Bedford, Massachusetts. She has a ton of luggage and is hustling to catch a late ferry to the mainland so she can visit her twin sister and her older cousin (Charles Ruggles). The ferry has already departed, however, and - with no other recourse - she asks a local man to give her a lift. He is Glenn Ford.
Ford is a lighthouse keeper with a small boat. At first he tells Davis "no", he can't give her a ride, it's against regulations. But of course in a melodrama this is just a device to create friction so that the two will eventually bond. Kate is an artist who paints portraits. She is a lonely woman, demure and somewhat naive, but not without initiative. After finagling her boat ride, she stops in at the family estate on the mainland to check in with her cousin, then turns around and rents a boat to sail herself back out to the lighthouse, hoping to see Glenn Ford again. This was in 1946, when he was a young and handsome leading man. Soon she falls in love with him. It may not be requited, though. He seems to love her but........only in a platonic way. One factor in their favor is that they are both dreamers who live outside the norm, she as an artist, he at the lighthouse. He wants to live away from society. On paper they are made for each other, but then......
Kate's more sophisticated twin steps into the picture. Her name is Pat (also played by Davis). Pat is a man crazy vixen; just hearing of Kate's interest in Glenn Ford sends her into competitive mode. She isn't jealous, because she knows she can take Ford away from her shy sister, and she does so, first by a "chance meeting" where she follows him to a train depot, and then by a lunch date. After that he is hooked, because she is sexier and much more forward, but also more cunning and shallow than her open-hearted and somewhat innocent sister.
This is a story about real love, coming from the heart, versus the false imitation of love based on egomania and lust.
Glenn Ford is an idealist but still a man, and he is swayed by the attention of the dominant sister Pat. He hastily marries her, and his life course takes a detour. Where he had wanted to remain a lighthouse keeper, he now finds himself living in New York, off the Davis sisters' family money.
Nice sister Kate, meanwhile, becomes a respected portrait artist, talented enough to warrant a gallery showing. This sequence begins a subtheme that I am not sure was necessary to the plot, but at any rate, a very unpleasant character is introduced - a belligerent anti-social young painter played by Dane Clark. He attends Kate's gallery premier only for the free food. He is hungry, poor and envious of her success even though he has never heard of her. His character only serves, plotwise, to motivate Kate out of her complacency. He is so antagonistic towards her - even as she offers him use of her home studio - that it's a wonder she - and we the viewers! - don't kick him out (and in our case kick him out of the movie, he's that obnoxious). I suppose he does toughen Kate up. He tries at one point to come on to her, and she stands him off, growing wiser in the ways of men, not all men, but many.
Altogether, though, the Dane Clark character is but a device, and a little hard to deal with as (I think) he overdoes it a bit.
The musical score by Max Steiner ebbs and swells and even pitter-patters in places, to let you know what you should be feeling. This is not inappropriate, as The Score has long been part and parcel of the effectiveness of the drama in any movie not made for arthouse theaters.
The situation between the sisters will come to a head during a sailboat expedition into Nantucket Sound. This scenario will become harrowing and will result in a nebulous identity switch between the sisters.
That is all I can tell you without revealing the details of the final act of the 107 minute film. Bette Davis carries the movie with her twin portrayals, and as one reviewer pointed out, she is really playing three characters. You will see why for yourself. Davis was a very great actress, head and shoulders above most, even though she had a particular style that featured the exposure of a "brittle" female psychology. She became famous for playing "women on the edge" or "high-flying bitches", sorry about the non-PC terminology but that's what she played in many movies.
But here, in 'A Stolen Life", we see the breadth of her talent as she contrasts the opposition between the sister's desires and their outlooks on life. Any actress today would be hard pressed to pull off such a subtle contrast and I say this with great respect for the best of the modern actresses.
Bette Davis, however, was Bette Davis. She could be over the top, and sometimes too much to deal with, but when she was at her best, she was the best ever. Hollywood would agree.
Two Big Thumbs Up for "A Stolen Life", which also has the quality in it's final scenes of a William Dieterle fantasy like "Portrait Of Jenny". ////
That's all for tonight. We had a small group in choir this morning, likely due to the holiday, but the singing was some of the best yet.
The weather, though, was atrocious. Can you imagine 55 degrees in late May, with leaden skies opening up to wind and rain as if it were December?
That's what we had today, when in every year past in my lifetime, we would have had temps near 80 at the minimum, maybe overcast but just as likely sunny, and on many occasions it would have been near 90 and maybe even higher, and always, always, always........Summery, or closing in on it.
But today, on the Sunday before Memorial Day - which is the unofficial start of Summer in Southern California - it was so cold that I nearly froze on my evening walk. I was wearing a Pendelton but needed a sweatshirt too. Normally a t-shirt would have sufficed.
This really sucks, big time, and it is proof that Global Warming is affecting our weather to an extreme degree (as if the folks in the tornado alleys, Eastern Seaboard or Gulf States needed any more evidence).
We aren't exactly suffering in SoCal, so please understand that I complain because I lament what was.
What was, was that we used to have hot, or at least warm, sunny weather most of the year.
We don't any more. Nowdays, you never know what you're gonna get, but often as not, the weather sucks, and we are cold more often than hot, and even freezing at the beginning of June. ////
That's all for tonight, see you in the morning. Peace and Love is sent as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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