The Letter (1940)

The Letter is an American crime film first released in 1940, directed by William Wyler.  The film is based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham and stars Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort and Gale Sondergaard.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Late one evening, whilst her husband is away working in his Malayan rubber plantation, Leslie Crosbie shoots a man dead in front of her house.    The victim is identified as Hammond, a man known to the Crosbies.  Leslie reveals that she killed him in a moment of madness when he tried to seduce her.  The Crosbies’ lawyer Howard Joyce is persuaded that Leslie was the victim in the affair and is sure that no jury will convict her.  Then he learns that the dead man’s Malayan widow has in her possession a letter in which Leslie invited Hammond to her home on the night he was killed…

The sublime Bette Davis gives one of her legendary knock-’em-dead performances in this stylish adaptation of a stage play by W. Somerset Maugham.   The film was directed by William Wyler, one of the great film auteurs of Hollwood’s Golden Age who has the distinction of being nominated for more Academy Awards than any other director.  Wyler had previously worked with Bette Davis on Jezebel (1938), whilst Davis had starred in another Somerset Maugham adaptation, Of Human Bondage (1934).  Herbert Marshall, who plays Davis’s husband in this film, had taken the part of the murdered lover in a 1929 version directed by Jean de Limur that starred Jeanne Eagels.  The film, one of Wyler’s finest, was nominated for seven Oscars – including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Score and Best Actress – but (incredibly) won none.

Bette Davis’s cool portrayal of a calculating murderess is chilling yet also evokes considerable pathos.  Every gesture, every expression suggests conscious snakelike evil, but what we also see is a passionate yet vulnerable woman who has been consumed and destroyed by an unattainable love.  Leslie Crosbie is a woman that has no reason to live, but she has fear enough to continue the charade of a life from which all meaning and hope have been stolen.   The depravity of Davis’s character is heightened by James Stephenson’s sympathetic portrayal of a scrupulously honest lawyer who is torn between his professional integrity and his loyalty to his client.  Stephenson’s performance alone is reason enough to watch this film.

One of the most striking things about The Letter is how much of the story is told by pictures rather than by dialogue – which is pretty unusual for a 1940s Hollywood film.  The seductively beautiful chiaroscuro cinematography lends a mood of sultry film noir oppression and brooding menace.  This is brilliantly underscored by Max Steiner’s music, which expresses the unspoken thoughts of the protagonists who seem strangely incapable of articulating their true feelings to one another.  The only false note in an otherwise perfect film is the ending, which replaces the bitter irony of the original play with slightly tacky moralistic contrivance.  This was imposed to comply with Hollywood’s stringent Production Code, which insisted that an adulteress could not go unpunished in a motion picture.  

The Letter is a rare masterpiece of cinematic art that transcends mere melodrama.  It is a captivating and sensual work of immense poetry, vividly evoking those dark inner forces that can take control of our lives, twist and distort our reason, and propel us towards a terrible ruin.  It achieves this very subtly, without overblown artistic style or excessive histrionics, by restrained yet remarkably effective direction, camerawork and performances.   This is Hollywood at its best, a film that lingers in the mind forever, like the splintered fragments of a half-remembered dream.

© James Travers 2008

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