Suffering in mink takes a human turn as Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis), the unwillingly sheltered adult child of Boston society matron Mrs. Henry Vale (played with iron menace by Gladys Cooper) embarks on a quest to establish a confident independence. Or is it an independent confidence? Aided by the wise and kindly Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains) following a nervous breakdown, Charlotte has only to overcome her sense of obligation to the world and define her own happiness. Was there ever a more favorable portrayal of therapy? If so, this must predate them all–and it is all the more remarkable for the chauffeur-and-chandelier backdrop of its inhabitants.

Dave and Jeremy marvel at this lost world of fictional high society, and at how easily Bette Davis conveys the inner journey of a character who transcends that world, transformed by her willingness to “be interested in everything,” as Dr. Jacquith instructs her, while at the same time learning to say no when it counts. Could any other actress nail scene after scene with as much self-possession as Davis does when Charlotte resists pressure to return to her old, unhappy life? The love interest here is played by Paul Henreid, gentle instigator of our hero’s romantic agency, whose own self-determining arc mirrors Charlotte’s just enough to put her nuanced star turn in brilliant relief. Join Dave and Jeremy for a celebration of a late-blooming camellia in this episode where we set sail with Warner Brothers’ 1942 production of NOW, VOYAGER.

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We’ll be back next month with Jeremy’s reply.

Music by Jeremy Donald.

Find Dave here:

https://linktr.ee/davedwelling

Fortunes change with the seasons in this 2002 exploration of social consequences set in 1950s Hartford, Connecticut.

Kathy Whittaker, played by Julianne Moore, achieves peak surburbia just as her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) begins having gay dalliances and Raymond, a new gardener, awakens Kathy’s need for romantic connection. That Raymond, played by Dennis Haysbert, is Black, allows Kathy to experience an instructive dose of otherness on her visit with him to the Black parts of town. This translates to very real social shunning once her bigoted peers learn of her relationship, and Kathy’s standing is threatened on nearly all sides. Haynes serves up this compelling parable in the unblemished jewel-tones and maudlin violins of mid-century melodrama. With dialogue as stiff as Frank’s starched collars juxtaposed with unexpectedly naturalistic performances, more than a few scenes combust to devastating effect within the button-down milieu.

Dave delights in the throw-back nod to Douglas Sirk and the genre of the ‘women’s picture,’ and in the uncanny blend of cliches and earnest heartbreak. Jeremy questions the narrative goals at work in the movie, musing on the resistance the film offers to any easy moral judgments. Did Kathy change, or was she a fish-out-of-water the whole time? Is the audience–or even the whole film–complicit in a white lady pity-party? And does anyone who lives in a split-level house still wear a tux to their own holiday party?

Never trust the guy who makes the first toast at your anniversary party!

Jeremy responds to Dave’s inaugural choice of Hitchcock’s I CONFESS with Brian De Palma’s 1976 film OBSESSION, starring Cliff Robertson and Genevieve Bujold, with a treacherous frenemy turn from John Lithgow. Something is rotten in New Orleans in this genteely lurid steambath of loss and longing, as Robertson’s Michael Courtland hopes to recapture the love of his life by wooing a younger woman whose uncanny resemblance to his dead wife alarms those closest to him. With Bujold playing both female roles, we’re firmly in Hitchcock territory, with nods to VERTIGO piling up like stacks of cash in the ransom scheme that robbed our hero of his wife and daughter years before.

Dave unpacks the parallels between Hitchcock’s masterpiece of fetishism and OBSESSION’s layers of imitation, while Jeremy marvels at the artistic choices that made Roger Ebert enthusiastically describe this film as “overwrought melodrama” in which “excess is its own reward.” With Lithgow twanging his way through a series of white linen suits and languid, spiteful glances, Robertson’s stoic and deeply tanned widower and his new paramour both find themselves retreading familiar ground as they approach the uncanny denouement.

Is it good-bad or bad-good? Can you blame a guy for believing the unlikeliest of coincidences? Don’t you want to see what happens when he goes all in? Join us for our next episode where we uncover the image behind the image that is OBSESSION.

Music by Jeremy Donald.

Find Dave here:

https://linktr.ee/davedwelling