Bette Davis, Jezebel

as JULIE MARSDEN

It seems unfortunately inopportune that Bette Davis won her second and final Oscar for a 1938 film. Because if Of Human Bondage indicated the arrival of a star and Dangerous existed to represent the official crowning of a star, then Jezebel is really just Davis warming up for the superstar phase of her career. There were so many iconic roles and films awaiting Davis in the decades ahead and yet she would never win another statue again. On top of that, any significance made by Jezebel and Julie Marsden would forever be trumped by Gone with the Wind and Scarlett O'Hara the following year.



That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Jezebel or its star. With Julie Marsden, this is most definitely a new and improved Davis, especially when you compare it to the excitingly garish but somewhat ridiculous Mildred or the somewhat ridiculous and somewhat dull Joyce Heath. One can certainly sense that Davis was happy to sink her teeth into the role of Julie, and I could feel a reinvigorating freshness in Davis here as she internally navigates the character throughout the film. For once Davis isn't applying all of her feelings externally through screams and cries and the breaking of objects; instead she bottles up all of Julie's hurt and pain and wounded pride and bitchiness, giving her a soft speaking voice that administers potently and brings to mind Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly (the quieter ones are the most dangerous ones after all). She's larger than life yet confidently contained--the way she says "Bradford...Amy Bradford...from New York" or "Have the little Yankee join in...we have such charming customs down here" cut with precision, her eyes louder and all the more formidable because of her subtler acting. Even her more emotional moments--the scene when she is freshly dumped by Pres, the subsequent scene of her dealing with life after Pres, and the "Jezebel" scene--are acted with greatly controlled emotion. Whereas Mildred and Joyce often commanded attention because of their explosive emoting, I found myself drawn to Julie more so because she's such an interesting character--a wolf in sheep's clothing if you will--ugly in her cunning and pigheadedness yet masked under a pretty and genteel veil of irresistibly girlish Southern Antebellum charm. It's all executed wonderfully by Davis, a solid performance if ever there was one, but as much as I enjoyed her I can't say that I felt I was watching something extraordinarily magnificent. The film is perfectly watchable and so is she, but the performance as a whole is sort of like...foreplay, for lack of a better word. You get the feeling that this newfound understatedness is the mark of a new direction and a new capacity for greater things, but for the most part Davis is bubbling right under phenomenal the whole time, though not quite there yet to warrant the superlative. She's pretty good, certainly not a terrible victory in the most technical sense because at the end of the day, "pretty good" is typical of a lot of Oscar wins (and sometimes "pretty good" is much better than a lot of Oscar wins), and had a different actress played Julie it may have been a more satisfying victory. But this is Davis we're talking about, and when we're discussing legendary actresses of her caliber, "pretty good" is still a tiny bit underwhelming. Still, Julie Marsden is a fascinating creation and nothing short of compelling, even if Davis' win here seems like premature ejaculate on AMPAS' part.