Deception – directed by Irving Rapper. Drama. The reunion of two musicians after separation by The War leads to big prevarications by the woman about her sugar daddy.
110 minutes Black and White 1946.
★★★★★
Twice I saw Bette Davis on the stage: once in Tennessee Williams’ Night Of The Iguana and once in a musical review, Two’s Company. Mildred Dunnock, who liked Bette and had made The Corn Is Green with her, said she didn’t believe Davis for a minute: “When she looks out over the audience for that ship, she doesn’t see a thing.” What I saw in the Williams was a performer throwing herself about the stage in a way that had nothing really to do with the motivation of the character at all. And as a vaudeville player she was, to be kind, misplaced. It wasn’t because Bette Davis had no stage experience, for she had plenty. It was that her craft, through her misuse of it, her distortion of it, her misprision of it, her exaggeration of its tics, her creation of a star-persona for it, had deteriorated it to the level of the amateur – and I use the word in its pejorative sense –– to the level of community theatre. This is not to say she was not professional. She had simply lost her basic craft. This was largely the case with her after All About Eve. It is sad to think of this happening to a human being, and especially through their own contrivance.
When you consider her next to the big female stars of her era, it is startling. Bette Davis could do comedy, though not often did she do so. Joan Crawford could not. Stanwyck and Hepburn and Colbert could. Davis could appear convincingly in costume drama, by which I mean costume drama in eras before the living memory of anyone involved in presenting it. Hepburn could not, neither could Crawford, and Stanwyck was barely acceptable. Davis was better at drama than Hepburn, whose specialty was high comedy.
And when you consider Hepburn’s career with that of Davis, you see Hepburn going on to essay the classic roles in her middle-age. The Madwoman Of Chaillot, The Trojan Women, Suddenly Last Summer, The Glass Menagerie. Hepburn was to act with the big classic actors of her era, Paul Scofield, Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier. Davis was never to appear with such powerful costars. Hepburn took on Shakespeare: The Merchant Of Venice, Taming Of The Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Othello, and even, if you will, Anthony and Cleopatra. Davis never tried anything along those lines. Hepburn did it to stretch her instrument, and she succeeded. Mildred Dunnock said of her that she was one of the few actresses of her era who had grown, and she was saying this about an actress who had played parts she herself had played. (Mildred Dunnock was the greatest Mary Tyrone of her era.) But Millie also said of Bette Davis that, when Millie was in Hollywood to make a movie, “You called Bette. She didn’t call you.”
And that seems typical of the petrified ego we see displayed in Bette Davis’ work for the last 40 years of her life. What we see is an actress who isn’t really calling you. What she is addressing is always her position.
This was not in full force with Deception. It is one of her best pieces because of her most restrained.
That is because she is playing a liar. She does it rather melodramatically, rolling her eyes at the audience from time to time to telegraph to us a different story than the one unfolding on stage. But she is generally sweetened under the role because she has to play a once in a lifetime love for Paul Henreid, an actor she liked. But, as we know, she is an actress who can play only one thing at a time.
This means that she has no subtext. She was an actress of big effects, and they are often enjoyable. So the reason she deceives Paul Henried about being a kept woman by Claude Rains is never because she is ashamed of it, but rather to spare Henreid’s feelings, at least that is the it-wont-wash reason given. Yet, she plays it well on the only level she knows how to play, which is physically. She is blithe about deceiving Henreid, and that would work were she consistent in not letting us know that she is deceiving him, improbable as the deceptions are. She switches from one thing to another like courses in a meal, but each with one vegetable only. To deliver subtext, behind Henreid’s back, she blares her eyes at us; Bette Davis’s eyes were no match for subtlety; subtlety was not within her range. Subtext is a subtlety.
She’s good, because so willing, but the pleasures of the film also lie in adjacent areas: in the decor, which is executed by George James Hopkins and art director Anton Grot. Two massive interiors appear before us as plot elements, and their impressive presence is a treat to see. Nothing rich was spared. For it, Korngold himself wrote the cello concerto Paul Henried plays, a concerto performed to this day around the world. And John Collier wrote the brilliant dialogue. If you like talking films to talk, this is one of the best. And the spaces of non-talk are equally eloquent, for Ernest Haller photographed it, as he was to do with seven of her films, wonderfully. He took care not to look at Davis too closely, for she at 38 was a bit long in the tooth for the role and looked it. She did not age well. Indeed, she was pregnant with her first child as it was made, so she is a little thick in the waist. He shoots her in three-quarter shots, and spares the close-ups. “Oh, Ernest how come you can’t make me look like you did in Jezebel?” she cried. “Well, Bette,” he said, “I was eight years younger then.” Bernard Newman costumes her powerfully.
It’s a four-character piece, not camp and played seriously by everyone. John Abbott plays the cellist understudy perfectly, and Paul Henreid is fine as the cellist. But if you want a good time rollicking in guilty pleasures, Claude Rains gives the performance of his career as the richly-spoken composer Hollenius who desires to drive everyone crazy and succeeds. You must not deny yourself the indulgence of this display of acting genius. The pictures was her first box office failure. But along with The Corn Is Green, The Little Foxes, The Letter, In This Our Life, and The Man Who Came To Dinner, it is one of her best.