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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 54.69%
Worth A Look: 29.69%
Average: 10.94%
Pretty Bad: 1.56%
Total Crap: 3.13%
2 reviews, 52 user ratings
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| Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte |
by Chef ADogg
"You idiot. You wretched idiot!"
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Fuck drama and suspense. You can file "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" under "Crazy Old Shrews." More catfighting, bitchslapping, and eye rolling than you can shake a severed hand at. It fairly rocks.I hope Bette Davis is better in her other films. I mean, ALOT better. Same for Olivia deHavilland. I haven't seen either of them in much of anything, but they're just awful in this one. The script really doesn't call for much more than iris-busting bitchery, though, so I guess they did their respective jobs.
Davis plays a Southern belle who got romantically swindled way the hell back in 1927 by Bruce Dern; the guy wound up dead and people are still thinking in 1964 that she was the one to butcher him. Her cousin (deHavilland) comes to visit, skeletons pop out of closets, and the prosthetic heads begin to roll. Ain't women great?
But--the movie's a mess. I'm really making it sound WAY too good. I mean, there are some great parts (particularly a stunning dance sequence with jaw-dropping results), but it's basically a soap opera that drags on for nearly two and a half hours.
The midsection of the film is too soggy for my tastes; we start off with a nice narrative pull, and I enjoyed the editing quite a bit. But--what is this? All of a sudden we're in Sapville, where boring subplots wander aimlessly and overblown music swells in the background. We're given the initial set up, and then left for an hour and a half with only geriatric nags at each others' throats to watch.
The plot starts developing at a steady clip again once the final act gets going, and you can hear the twists snapping in the background. I would have liked to have seen these laid out more evenly throughout the film, so my interest didn't flag quite so much, but at least they were there (which I initially feared would not be the case).
Another problem: Bette Davis. It's not only her performance that bugs me, but her character as well. I just can't get behind a lead character that refuses to stand up for herself and spends the climax looking confused in the background. To her credit, she does pull off "befuddled" better than most actors I have seen, and there are a few scenes where she really dips into the sadness behind her character and makes you feel it.
On the plus side? Joseph Cotten, as always, tears shit up. He looks a little bit older and fatter here than he did in "Citizen Kane" and "Reasonable Doubt," but he hasn't lost his touch. Agnes Moorehead also turns in some really quality work as the maid who starts out as perfunctory comic relief but deepens as the film progresses. Kudos to the both of 'em.
The direction is actually pretty quality; this was made back when some directors actually knew how to tell a story. I thought a lot of parts, though, would have looked MUCH better in color--Robert Aldrich was probably trying for elegance, but, this being one of the most overdone in films in history, I would have just gone with Technicolor. It would have spruced a lot of the outdoor scenes up.
I think that pretty much closes this one up. Rent it if you're a fan of Joseph Cotten and you'd like to see Bette Davis in pigtails.He's dead...AND YOU KILLED HIM! (bwahahaha)
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3488&reviewer=123
originally posted: 12/10/99 16:50:52
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USA
24-Dec-1964 (NR)
DVD: 09-Aug-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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