An intelligent and headstrong woman stripped of her autonomy

Our favorite film-blogger, the Siren, has developed a new appreciation for Bette Davis' supposed consolation prize for not getting the role of Scarlet O'Hara---William Wyler's Jezebel:

clipped from selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com 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.

Comments

[Campaspe]

I must use you as a pull-quote. "My favorite film blogger"--Lance Mannion.