Film Review
Throughout the 1950s, Robert Aldrich had steadily acquired a reputation as
one of Hollywood's golden boy filmmakers, although his dream of attaining
complete independence was constantly frustrated by his struggles to raise
the funding for his bold and innovative brand of cinema. Even after
such diverse and well-received works as
Vera Cruz (1954),
The Big
Knife (1955),
Kiss Me Deadly
(1955) and
Autumn Leaves (1956), Aldrich still had difficulty attracting
finance. The unexpected success of
What Ever Happened to
Baby Jane? (1962), a pretty blatant attempt to cash in on the success
of the nascent psycho-thriller craze spawned by Alfred Hitchcock's
Psycho (1960), gave Aldrich the stimulus
he needed at a critical stage in his career. Through this digression
into crass B-movie territory the director would have far more of an impact
on the cinema of the 1960s and '70s than he could ever have imagined - by
bringing into being a horror sub-genre that now goes by the name
Grand
Dame Guignol or
hagsploitation movie.
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a prime example of the trashy new
horror offshoot that Aldrich fathered in the mid-1960s. It was intended
as a direct follow up to
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, with Bette
Davis and Joan Crawford once again thrown together like slavering lions in
the arena, to bite lumps out of each other for the delectation of a sensation-seeking
audience. Pandering to the base sadistic cravings of a drive-in cinema
crowd may not have been the noblest of motivations for a filmmaker who was
already becoming recognised as a major auteur (particularly by the leading
French film critics), but this dubious dive into cheap populism allowed Aldrich
to gain sufficient financial independence and public recognition to prosper
and extend his range, culminating in his biggest success,
The Dirty Dozen (1967).
When the writer Henry Farrell -
Baby Jane's creator - offered Aldrich
his unpublished potboiler novella
What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte?
the director had what must have seemed like another sure-fire hit in his
sights. The public were clamouring for a Bette Davis-Joan Crawford
rematch, although neither actress was keen on the idea, the experience of
Baby Jane aggravating their mutual antipathy to pathological proportions.
Crawford bitterly resented Davis being nominated for the Best Actress Award
on that film (while she herself was overlooked), and did her damnedest to
prevent her rival from winning the coveted Oscar. Davis would never
forgive Crawford for this act of skulduggery, with the result that their
anticipated rematch came close to being scuppered scarcely after the cameras
had started rolling.
Even though both actresses adored and revered Robert Aldrich, neither was
keen on rerunning the production nightmares of
Baby Jane. Davis
only agreed to work on a follow-up if she was made an associate producer,
but by having this privileged status she immediately had an advantage over
Crawford which she exploited ruthlessly. The production got off to
the shakiest of starts during its location shoot in Baton Rouge, with Davis
skilfully managing to alienate the entire cast and crew against her more
glamorous co-star. Crawford's insecurities and outrage made it impossible
for her to work but, unable to release herself from her contract, she adopted
one of Davis's old tactics, feigning a mystery illness so that she would
be unavailable to shoot her scenes. Aldrich even went as far as hiring
a private detective to expose the fraud, without success. After production
on the film had ground to a halt, the director had no choice but to sack
Crawford and look for an immediate replacement, or else cancel the movie
altogether.
Actresses as diverse as Loretta Young, Katharine Hepburn and Vivien Leigh
were considered to replace Crawford, but no one appeared interested in the
role. It was Bette Davis who, having vetoed umpteen other choices,
suggested Olivia de Havilland, an actress she had worked with successfully
in the past - on such popular films as
The Private
Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and
In This Our Life (1942).
At the time, de Havilland was living in Europe and had little enthusiasm
for working on what was being sold as a sequel to
What Ever Happened to
Baby Jane? She was finally won over by Davis, whom she both greatly
admired and considered a close friend. As it turned out, the casting
of de Havilland was hugely advantageous for the film. Having distinguished
herself in a similar, teasingly ambiguous role in Henry Koster's
My Cousin
Rachel (1952), she was perfectly suited to play the cool, scheming Myriam
opposite Davis's neurotic and dangerously repressed Charlotte.
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte has many artistic strengths (as well
as one or two glaring flaws) but the one thing that makes it such a powerfully
compelling piece of cinema is the electrifying tension between the two central
characters - each played with a ferocious authenticity by a superlative acting
talent at the height of her abilities. It is of course interesting
to speculate how the film might have fared if Crawford had stayed the course.
There would undoubtedly have been more in the way of on-screen fireworks,
but after seeing de Havilland in the film it is hard to imagine any other
actress in the role of Myriam. There is a measured subtlety to her
performance, deeply unsettling in the way she toys with her character's ambiguities,
that allows de Havilland to appear just as menacing and impactful as Davis,
without the latter's stronger personality and penchant for histrionic explosions.
Unburdened by the in-your-face vicious competitiveness that turned
Baby
Jane into something of a super-sadistic Clash of the Titans spectacle,
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte has a sustained aura of under-the-surface
malignancy, making it the more disturbing and authentically tragic of the
two films. We are constantly reminded of the awfulness of Charlotte's
predicament - which grows inexorably as the outlandish narrative unfolds
- with the help of Frank De Vol's lyrical score, which includes the eerie
lullaby theme that runs through the film, becoming a hit single not long
after its release. (It was Davis who suggested renaming the film after
the lullaby, to weaken its connection with
Baby Jane).
Whilst its two leading ladies dominate the proceedings with consummate ease,
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is incredibly well-served by its supporting
cast, which includes some of the finest dramatic actors of the period - Joseph
Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway and Mary Astor. As Myriam's
nauseatingly blasé partner in crime, Cotten plays a crucial role in
the intrigue - at first seemingly a co-conspirator in a cunningly conceived
plot to rob Charlotte of her sanity and personal wealth, but soon revealing
himself to be a vain and greedy dupe, as easily manipulated as his victim
by a woman who clearly models herself on the most damning account of Lucrezia
Borgia. Cotten's Dr Bayliss is emblematic of all of the male characters
in the film, who are shown to be putty in the hands of the wilier female
protagonists. Even those who mean well - like Kellaway's charming insurance
investigator, one of the few characters Charlotte takes a shine to - are
powerless to prevent evil from triumphing. As is the case in a surprising
number of Robert Aldrich films with strong female characters, it is the women
- and only the women - who are capable of driving the narrative and directing
their own destinies.
As the fearsome-looking, shockingly bedraggled Velma - Charlotte's only dependable
ally - Agnes Moorehead turns in the performance of a career, virtually stealing
the film in her spirited but hopelessly doomed attempts to expose Myriam
for the scurrilous hellfiend that she is. At the time of the film's
first release, Moorehead was best known to American audiences for her far
more glamorous and amiable portrayal of Endora in the hit TV series
Bewitched.
In Aldrich's film, she is virtually unrecognisable, a scowling Rottweiler-like
crone without which no crumbling Gothic mansion would be complete.
It was fitting that Moorehead should pick up an Oscar nomination for Best
Supporting Actress, winning the Golden Globe in the same category.
In what was to be her cinematic swansong, albeit a cameo role, Mary Astor
also makes a strong impression. As the widow of the man who was so
brutally hacked to death at the start of the film (up-and-coming star Bruce
Dern), Astor holds us enthralled for every second she is on screen, subtly
exposing the agonising trauma that has long haunted her character (although
the reason for her torment isn't revealed until the end of the film).
Plotwise,
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte lacks the logical consistency
and plausibility of
Baby Jane, and the overt similarities between
the two films tend to make the later film resemble a less considered carbon
copy of its forerunner. The Grand Guignol theatrics, over-done black
humour and absurd plot contrivances were typical of the
Psycho-inspired
thrillers of this era, with far less able directors than Robert Aldrich more
than willing to serve up cheap gory thrills for a sensation-hungry audience
of (mostly) adolescent cinema-goers. The film begins with a visceral
wallop of a shock - a human hand and head being hacked off in a frenzied
meat cleaver attack by a mystery assailant - and then manages to maintain
an aura of unbroken tension and suspense as it builds to its gloriously frenetic
climax, lobbing the occasional dismembered body part at the spectator along
the way. This is schlock horror at its crudest but Aldrich gives it
a touch of class, fusing the tropes of Southern Gothic melodrama, classic
Gothic horror and contemporary psycho-thriller into something fresh and distinctive,
pre-empting the seductively stylish Giallo horror trend in Italian cinema
of the mid-to-late 1960s. The film's second half is less of a complacent
rip-off and more a respectful homage to H.G. Clouzot's
Les Diaboliques (1955), a popular
French thriller that had been emulated to death over the previous decade
by unimaginative writers and directors all-too-willing to clamber aboard
any passing bandwagon.
Robert Aldrich's mise-en-scène is as meticulous and visually compelling
as ever, the highpoint being a stunningly weird hallucinatory sequence which
sees Charlotte put into a drug-induced trance and forced to relive the traumatic
incident that ruined her life almost forty years before. The vibrant
party scene that opened the film is seemingly rerun, but now from Charlotte's
perspective, the faces of the guests washed out by some imaginative spot
lighting and use of gauzes to make them resemble faceless dummies.
It is a genuinely unnerving representation of the dream state - far stranger,
far more frightening than anything offered by any other film of the period
- and culminates in the film's most nightmarish image, Charlotte being invited
to dance by her handless and headless lover.
The feelings of anxiety and repression, the hellish reality that has defined
Charlotte's Stygian existence throughout her 37 years of solitary confinement,
then worsened by Myriam's Machiavellian mischief-making, are starkly evoked
by Joseph Biroc's atmospheric, overly emphatic noir photography. Rich
with oppressive shadows and ingenious optical effects suggestive of dark
undercurrents and extreme mental derangement, this makes the most of William
Glasgow's inspired art direction, which owes a great deal to expressionistic
horror classics of the past, notably Paul Leni's
The Cat and the Canary
(1927) and Universal's long run of Gothic horror classics, from
Frankenstein (1931) onwards.
Right from the start, trapped in her rotting labyrinthine Louisiana mansion
like a willing tribute act to Norma Desmond and Miss Havisham, the reclusive
Charlotte appears to be stuck at the mouldy heart of
the nastiest cobwell in Hell. The question we are constantly
forced to ask ourselves is: which is she - the spider or the fly? What
are the reasons for the guilt and shame that keep Charlotte a prisoner in
this creepy old mausoleum, in which her only companion is a mangy relic of
a gorgon who looks like something that has just escaped from the attic of
the Addams Family?
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte's seductively stylish visuals and bold
directorial flourishes offer ample compensation for a script (not one of
Lukas Heller's best) which doesn't bear close scrutiny and abounds with patently
risible plot inconsistencies. Does it matter that narrative sense goes
almost totally AWOL from the film's midpoint when the lead performances are
so utterly and consistently enthralling? Throughout her heyday Olivia
de Havilland was best known for playing the virtuous maiden, but as the coldly
conniving Myriam she earns a worthy place among the most memorable of Hollywood
villainesses, a Tom Ripley-type arch-sociopath whose malevolent cunning is
carefully concealed behind a mask of simulated compassion and gentility.
The screenwriter's crafty attempts at muddying the waters by diverting suspicion
on to Velma or Charlotte (both made up to resemble seasoned habituées
of a Bedlam-style madhouse) are what make the ultimate revelation of Myriam's
extreme villainy all the more sickening.
De Havilland is stunning in this film but even she cannot help being eclipsed
by her even more monstrously charismatic co-star.
Hush...Hush, Sweet
Charlotte is arguably Bette Davis's greatest screen triumph, a part that
connects her previous acclaimed roles (most obviously her Oscar-winning turn
in
Jezebel (1938)) with the rogues' gallery of matriarchs, misfits
and monsters that would predominate in the gloriously eccentric autumn of
her career.
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte may have been sold
to a '60s audience as a lurid shock-a-minute psycho-thriller but Davis elevates
it to something much more worthy, an intensely profound and poignant study
in human suffering - one that touches the heart as well as chilling the blood.
It is a tribute to Bette Davis's commitment to her art that she does not
play down to the trashy nature of the subject matter but instead gives it
her utmost with a performance of exceptional quality, one that is charged
to a dizzying degree with pathos and gut-wrenching human feeling. As
Myriam's true nature comes into focus, we are shocked to discover just how
wide of the mark our first impressions of Charlotte are. So potent
is the image of the cheating woman in her blood-soaked ball gown at the start
of the film that it is hard to shake off the notion that Charlotte is a deranged
killer. Reinforced by the woman's uncontrolled outbursts and ill-treatment
of others, our initial prejudices persist, until Davis finally compels us
to connect with her character and we see the full extent of the injustice
she has endured for so long. It is in the gruelling inhumanity suffered
by Charlotte that the film's true horror lies.
Bette Davis has earned many accolades in the course of her career, but here
she deserves special praise for her shockingly convincing depiction of a
human mind disintegrating under the strain of internal and external pressures.
Charlotte's final breakdown at the terrifying climax of the film is almost
too painful to watch. It is as if the poor woman's mercilessly crushed
soul is being dragged out of her broken body by a pack of Satanically possessed
wild dogs - the kind of unthinkable visceral suffering you would not expect
to find outside the confines of a well-stocked medieval torture chamber.
How enjoyable is the payback that Charlotte is able to deliver in the surprise
instalment that immediately follows - another sadistic shocker, but one that
we thoroughly delight in as Nemesis seizes the day with a demonic vengeance.
Predictably,
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte was met with mixed criticism
on its initial release in 1964. Even though many critics were quick
to write it off as just another example of B-movie psycho-trash, others gave
it more positive notices and the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards
(in categories that included Best Cinematography and Best Direction, but
- unfathomably - no nomination for Davis). It may not have been the
unqualified smash hit that
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? had been
(thanks no doubt to the long-anticipated Davis-Crawford confrontation) but
it still turned in a decent profit and gave a further badly needed boost
to Aldrich and his two leading ladies.
More significantly, the film established Grand Dame Guignol as one of the
key horror sub-genres of the era, with countless similar 'hag horror' offerings
being served up for audiences who couldn't get enough gargoyle-watching kicks.
For some time,
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte was considered a minor
entry in Aldich's mostly impressive oeuvre, paling even in comparison with
its slightly better behaved sibling
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Over the past few decades, however, the film has enjoyed something of a reappraisal,
rising from minor cult classic to one of the most admired, certainly one
of the most influential, horror offerings of its time.
Bette Davis allowed herself to become the queen of the hagsploitation genre,
lending it an air of respectability in such cult classics as
The Nanny (1965) and
The Anniversary (1968), although
legion was the array of fading divas from Hollywood's Golden Age who were
willing to prostitute their talents and plaster themselves with grease-paint
in a desperate bid to stave off obscurity as psycho-biddies - sinister talon-waving
homicidal harridans - to satisfy a jaded contemporary audience's craving
for the monstrous and macabre. Robert Aldrich's two full-throttle contributions
to Grand Dame Guignol are among the classier entries in this most dubious
of exploitation genres - the trashy surface impressions belied by the intense
psychological richness that lies beneath. The personal tragedies of
Baby Jane Hudson, Charlotte Hollis and their ilk have an all-too apparent
resonance with the fate of those once esteemed pulchritudinous lovelies who
ended up having to play them on screen in the latest development of the circus
Freak Show. Beauty is as transitory as youth, and once both are gone
what is there to do but man up and grow old as disgracefully as possible?
As Bette Davis herself once remarked, 'Old age ain't no place for sissies.'
© James Travers 2023
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