Despite its being forever linked with [Gone With The Wind,] Jezebel is its own animal, a movie just as concerned with the fate of a strong-willed woman in a rigid society but, in certain ways, more harshly realistic about the ways society revenges itself. As a girl the Siren much preferred Scarlett to Jezebel's Julie Marsden. She hated the way Julie is humiliated, not merely in the excruciating ball sequence, but also in the way she is coldly rejected in favor of the vacuous Margaret Lindsay (a perfectly cast actress whom Davis couldn't stand in real life). Ashley makes his sexual attraction to Scarlett quite clear, but once Henry Fonda rejects Julie it as though he never loved her at all. But later in life the Siren came to see that Jezebel, while it cannot compare with GWTW's vast historical canvas, indelible characters and peerless production values, is really the more biting social commentary.
That may seem impossible, given that Wyler's pictures generally affirm
rather than challenge social convention, helping to explain their
appeal to Oscar voters as well as the films' rejection by those who
prefer "termite art." You can read the movie as a straightforward
women's tale of the comeuppance of a first-rate scheming bitch, and no
doubt that is the tale Wyler and Davis thought they were filming. The
movie approves of her treatment, audiences then approved of it and
audiences today usually do as well. Witness the reviews that refer to
the character as "Jezebel," instead of her name, and speak of her
"deserved" humiliation at the Olympus Ball. But director and actress,
through their careful attention to Julie's character, create something
more complicated. Together Wyler and Davis show us an intelligent and
headstrong woman who can exert her will only in petty, useless acts of
rebellion, and then show Julie stripped of her autonomy, first in part
and then completely.
I must use you as a pull-quote. "My favorite film blogger"--Lance Mannion.
Posted by: Campaspe | Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 07:55 PM