Last night I watched an old Bette Davis movie. Very old: she played a 23 year old socialite. The movie also starred Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan in bit parts.
It was quite possibly the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen.
The plot: Bette Davis is a rich young thing who is into parties and horses. Bogie runs her stable and Dutch is a boyfriend who is perpetually soused. Bette suffers from headaches and double vision. A visit to a brain surgeon reveals a tumor. An operation alleviates the symptoms but can’t cure her. She’s going to die within months.
The good news is that she won’t suffer! She’ll just go on her merry way, feeling great, looking great, smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish with all her swishy friends until one day in the not too distant future, she’ll go blind and drop dead.
Sounds like the greatest terminal disease ever.
Since there’s nothing they can do for her and she feels great, her doctor decides not to tell her she’s going to die, although he does tell her best friend, swearing her to secrecy.
Bette is so delighted to be done with her health problems (!!) that she invites the Doc to many of her high society parties. Naturally, she falls in love with the guy who cured her.
(Except he didn’t)
Naturally, he falls in love with her. Does this make him want to tell her the truth about her condition? Hell no! He decides that keeping her happy for the remaining days of her life is the important thing so instead of being Doctor Downer and blurting out the truth, he marries her!
HE MARRIES HER.
Okay, before they tie the knot, Bette discovers a file in his office with her name on it and naturally, she reads it. That’s how she finds out what life (death) has in store for her.
Yeah, she gets mad at her boyfriend and spends a few weeks drunk but she gets over it and they get married.
There’s a scene where her best friend (the one who knew she was dying but agreed not to tell her) comes to visit after they’re married and Bette tells her how she and the Doc have decided to handle her imminent demise: they’ve decided to ignore it.
JUST IGNORE IT!! PRETEND IT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
By the time Bette’s end comes, she and her buddy are planting flowers in the yard and Bette says “Oh, there’s a storm coming. It’s getting so dark out! Why, it’s getting darker by the minute.” I felt like I was watching a movie spoof and was kind of disappointed that Bette didn’t just pitch face down in the dirt.
But no! she rallies heroically, pretending she can see just long enough to shove her hubby out the door to catch the train to New York where he’s going to present a paper or accept a prize for the research he’s done into her condition because apparently it would be super embarrassing to die in front of him.
He leaves.
She dies.
I couldn’t stop laughing.
I understand the ‘Dark’ part but I don’t know where the ‘Victory’ comes in. Is staying in denial until you quit breathing supposed to be a form of winning? I guess it could be but I wouldn’t brag about it.
Stupidest movie I’ve ever seen.