Visiting Film Noir: The Letter

1940 Film Noir

From Warner Brothers

Directed by William Wyler

Starring

Bette Davis 

Herbert Marshall

James Stephenson

Gale Sondergaard

Frieda Inescourt

Victor Sen Yung

Bruce Lester

Cecil Kellaway

I think Davis's best performance and best film is All About Eve but I would be among those quick to admit that this woman turned in so damned many good performances it could be difficult for some to pick her best.  At Warner Brothers in the forties, she was royalty and got all the choice roles... if she wanted them.  Most people would agree, I think, that her turn in The Letter is one of her best performances. 

Davis was not always a happy camper at work or at home.  But she was a bundle of joy on this film, primarily, I suspect, because she was being directed by Wyler, a man she had once loved and who had loved her.  She was also basking in the glow of a new romance (and eventual marriage).  A doctor had told her she was in the best physical health (despite the incessant puffing?).

Additionally she was thrilled to be playing Leslie Crosbie in the highly-regarded Somerset Maugham work that in an early talkie had starred her favorite of all actresses, Jeanne Eagels.   That thrill, as any Davis fan knows, may have come from the fact that she played a Maugham heroine before... Mildred in Of Human Bondage (1934.)

The film opens when the wife of a rubber plantation manager in Singapore shoots a man inside her bungalow and then follows him as he staggers outside and unloads the rest of the bullets into him.  

She claims that it was self-defense when the man, a family friend, suddenly put the moves on her and despite her pleas would not stop so she plugged him.  Most everyone believes her.  Her husband, Robert (Marshall), completely believes her although her attorney, Howard Joyce (Stephenson), says doubting comes with the job,  The various natives who work for the couple also have their suspicions as well.  There is no doubt that she will have to stand trial.

While she is in jail, it comes to the attention of her attorney that there is a letter, written to the victim on the day of his death and in her own handwriting, that may shine a different light on the case.  Leslie says it must be a forgery because she never wrote any letter to him.  Also discovered is that the letter is in the possession of the man's widow (Sondergaard) who wants $10,000 for a trade.  Before any such transaction takes place, the widow duplicates the contents of the letter in her own handwriting and sends it to the lawyer via his clerk, the all-knowing Victor Sen Yung .  The attorney is now convinced the letter is genuine and that Leslie lied about why she killed him.

Leslie insists that her attorney buy the letter, both knowing full well that he is stepping outside the law and risking his career and freedom.  Still, he agrees.  The widow insists that Leslie personally appear with the money and once she does, the woman insists that Leslie grovel at her feet (literally).

With the letter suppressed, Leslie is easily acquitted.  The Crosbies decide to throw a party to celebrate.  Before it begins, however, she and Robert and Joyce are sitting in the bungalow chatting and Robert's longtime trust of his wife begins to erode.  He begins speaking of moving to Sumatra where his business opportunities are greater and where they can get a fresh start where no one knows of the past.

Robert speaks of needing a bit more money to add to the $10,000 he already has.  Though her confession doesn't come easily, she tells him that she has spent the money (for the letter) and when he asks to see it (he had never been told of its existence), he realizes that the murdered man was her lover and that she killed him out of jealousy (he had gotten married).  Robert is inconsolable and both he and Leslie want to forego the party but it is too late.

While the couple argues in the bedroom, Robert asks her if she loves him.  She answers yes and then immediately changes her mind and says no.  She then blurts out the line that explains things once and for all for Robert and became the film's most famous and amusing line: with all my heart, I still love the man I killed.  (Davis didn't want to say it but Wyler insisted.)

Earlier, outside her bedroom door leading to the garden, was a dagger.  Leslie believed it was left there by the widow in the hope that Leslie would kill herself.  Now she checks for the knife and finds it missing.  She is sure the widow is waiting out in the dark for her and she walks out to meet her fate.  Outside the wall that surrounds the bungalow, a man grabs Leslie, stuffing a cloth in her mouth, as the widow steps forward and kills her with the dagger.  As they run off they are caught by the police.

Davis bathing in noir

If, through a yawn, you realize you've seen this general story before, you would be right.  You have... dozens of times... but seldom better.  Wyler and Davis, Maugham and screenwriter Howard Koch are not some rummies trying out a new look on an old, well-worn plot.  The film is loaded with atmosphere (the studio soundstage tropics worked for me) and the noir optics... that lighting, the shadows, the venetian blinds captured on the walls, the darkness, rain.  There was a strange, other-worldly quality to capturing the moon, slipping in and out of dark clouds, in three scenes, that I've never forgotten.  It is beautifully filmed.  It is slowly played out... the camera lingers on many things throughout, there's a little more thinking from some characters before answering a question.  

More of this lingering makes one suspicious of what's going on, what's in store?  It all feels very deliberate and beyond the murder itself, what evil lurks?  Feeling all the menace makes one edgy and if that happens for you, give thanks to the quartet in the prior paragraph.

Davis has never been so cool and calm playing a murderess.  The character, of course, is full of artifice but the actress is not.  While I have always found her to be a truly exceptional actor, I realize she is given to bursts of theatricality or hamminess if you prefer.  The latter is not in existence here and I have nothing but praise for her rather understated performance.  When the lawyer confronts her on the truth, we see another side of the character but the actress is subtle in the change while never forgetting about the tension she needs to continue.  She gets a big brava from me.

The writers did manage to have her character speak of her eyes in one scene which seemed most appropriate and may produce a wry smile.

I'll never do a piece entirely devoted to Herbert Marshall so I am compelled to get in my two cents' worth here and now.  First off, he is perfectly fine in the role.  He would be better the following year as Davis' put-upon husband in The Little Foxes, also directed by Wyler.  Marshall, by the way, was always perfectly fine.  He always gave a workman-like performance, rarely less, never more.  He could be terribly dull and I suspect he never kicked up a fuss about anything.  I confess to very much liking his voice.  He was almost invisible and that is exactly why he was perfect as a leading man to those strong, capable, tough actresses of his day.  He appeared opposite all of the Big Four... Stanwyck, Crawford, Hepburn and Davis.  It is no accident that Marshall, George Brent, Paul Henreid, Wendell Corey, Barry Sullivan and others were frequent costars.  The ladies rarely embraced a male threat. 

Marshall sometimes seemed uncomfortable to me in some of his films... almost like he's thinking let's get this over.  He had a wooden leg, a result of soldiering in WWI, and his walking in scenes was usually limited which I think produced a certain awkwardness in how some of those scenes were filmed.

I actually don't know who James Stephenson is.  I realize I saw him in a couple of thirties' flicks but have no recollection of him in either.  I do know that he was a tall, urbane Brit, well-cast as a lawyer caught between a strong-willed defendant and her husband, a friend, and doing what's right and lawful.  He is a superb as the sympathetic but conflicted family friend.  He is known to virtually no one, even to those who have seen this film, his best.  He even nabbed an Oscar nomination.

Davis originally championed Stephenson to Wyler who, in turn, found him to be all that was required.  But studio head Jack Warner decided to replace him because he wanted someone with name recognition.  Odd... it didn't seem to bother him in the casting of most of the other actors, not exactly household names.  Well, luckily the pesky pair, Davis and Wyler, won out.

Sondergaard causes a fright

Gale Sondergaard, whom I know only marginally more than I know Stephenson, is mesmerizing (and I don't use that word lightly in this case) as the scary widow.  Her face looks like the mask of a mass murderer.  I really got off on watching her make Bette Davis kneel before her.  I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.   

San Francisco-born Victor Sen Yung became a favorite Asian actor when I saw him in 1953's Forbidden as a piano-playing spy in Macao and I've caught up with a lot of his work since.  He always seemed to play someone who was smarter than everyone else in the story.  Here he becomes a liaison during the payment for the letter.

Max Steiner's musical score is most appropriate for its sultry locale and does its part to heighten the drama.  One could always count on Steiner, a Hollywood legend in his field.

Steiner would capture one of the film's seven Oscar nominations as did the aforementioned Stephenson.  Also in there were black and white cinematography and editing in addition to Davis, Wyler and the film itself.  None won and all were deserving of the nominations.

Some would say the film is all Wyler.  Never an incidental director or one who phoned in the direction, he was on top of everything.  He knew his films like he knew his five children.  What one feels at the end of the film and in the following days is just what Wyler wanted.  He and his leading lady always experienced some upheaval on their film sets and this one was no different.  He usually won but here, she did.  After most everything had been filmed and they were watching a playback, he wanted to film more scenes to soften her character and she adamantly refused.

I agree with critics who tended to find the ending the weakest part.  She apparently does not die in Maugham's work but those little overly-dressed men who monitored the morals of the country said that a murdering, lying adulteress has gotta go down.   

Bette and Willy

One day Davis would say I should have married Willy (Wyler).  She would go on to say it again and again in interviews and in her several biographies and memoirs over the years.  The truth is they loved one another and if they occasionally got along, their gargantuan egos did not.  He frequently asked her to marry him but she just didn't think she should.  

I remember hearing her once say that she could scarcely believe Wyler would come back into her life for a film specifically called The Letter.  At the time of signing up for it she thought it was a funny circumstance.  Davis knew that Willy was also seeing a new lady, Margaret Tallichet, but he asked Davis one last time to marry him and again she declined.  After he got home, he wrote her a letter saying that if she didn't marry him by the following Wednesday, several days away, he was going to marry Margaret.  

Davis didn't open the letter because she was emotionally drained on the whole thing but she left it up against a vase on a table in the foyer.  She had forgotten about it and on Wednesday evening she opened the letter.   She frantically called Wyler's home and was told that he and Margaret married earlier in the day.  Davis, apparently, was going to tell him she would marry him.  Ah, the letter.  Willy and Margaret, by the way, were married for nearly 43 years.  Davis became a family friend.

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A royal when she was young