Directed By: William Wyler
Starring: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson
Tag line: "With all my heart I still love the man I killed"
Trivia: Previously filmed as an early talkie in 1929 starring Jeanne Eagels
When it came to playing a bitch on-screen, few were better than Bette Davis.
In classics like Jezebel, The Little Foxes, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Davis displayed a penchant for strong-willed characters, and in 1940’s The Letter, she portrays a woman of questionable morals so determined to get her way that she is willing to kill for it.
Based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter tells the story of Leslie (Davis), the wife of wealthy plantation owner Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall). In the film’s opening scene, Leslie shoots and kills Geoff Hammond (David Newell), a man she claims attempted to rape her.
But as her attorney, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), delves deeper into the case, he discovers that Leslie and Hammond were, in reality, having an affair. What's more, an incriminating letter that Leslie wrote to Hammond, in which she laid out her true feelings for him, is currently in the hands of Hammond’s widow (Gale Sondergaard).
At Leslie’s insistence, Joyce tries to buy the letter in order to destroy it, but can they keep all this a secret from Robert, who is still convinced his wife is innocent?
From the initial scene alone, it’s easy to see why Davis received her fifth Academy Award nomination for her work in this film (she had won Best Actress twice before, for 1935’s Dangerous and 1938’s Jezebel). The peaceful serenity of a moonlit evening is broken by the sound of a gunshot. From a distance, we see Hammond stagger out the front door of the Crosbie estate, with Leslie following close behind, brandishing a revolver. As the plantation workers look on from their makeshift hut, Leslie fires another shot into Hammond
… and another…
and another.
By the time she finished, all six of the gun's bullets have been fired at point-blank range.
The deed done, Leslie stares at Hammond’s lifeless body, dropping the gun at her side. As the camera closes in on her, we sense the realization of what has just happened setting in on her, yet the blank expression on Leslie’s face never shifts. It is an intensely dramatic sequence, and Davis handles it perfectly.
Flawlessly directed by William Wyler and with a stirring Max Steiner score, The Letter is a true Hollywood classic in every sense of the word, and features an actress proving to the world why she is one of the greatest of all-time.
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