Dark Victory

Saw Dark Victory (thanks, Paul!) It was a disease film. Bette Davis plays a vivacious rich woman. When she is introduced, she is shown in the company of a dashing drunk and a flock of genially befuddled dukes and dowagers and so forth. Amidst all of this decadence and corruption, she stands out as one of the few who doesn't let a life of comfort sap her of her vitality. Her corruption, we discover, lies within. She suffers from a degenerative brain disease. She is given an operation and four months to live. The rest of the film revolves around her coming to terms with her death. Or rather, the most interesting bits do.

The film irritatingly throws a few distractions in her way. The doctors at first bewilderingly insist that she "never know" of her immanent death. Why? Surely she'd appreciate the opportunity to get her affairs in order. There's also a weird almost-plot-line where she believes her best friend and her doctor (who she has developed feelings for) are dating behind her back. She also engages in understandable but empty self-destructive behaviour. Humphrey Bogart has a cameo as an Irish horse trainer (his accent is almost non-existent. It's sort of funny.) She makes a pass at him that I found deeply interesting. He talks of riding hard and fast and of being proudly unrefined. He seems to represent the implacable illogic of nature which is killing the protagonist. She almost succumbs to him which would, to me, symbolize a reconciliation with her fate. Not only a surrender to but a marriage with the inexorable forces which we only kid ourselves that we understand. However, the film instead uses the scene to represent her darkest moments, when she almost embraces hedonism and (gasp!) marries the stable-boy!

This film was made in the 30s, when elegance and class were next to godliness and the embrace of nature, to the filmmakers, represents an embrace of the bestial. Instead, she comes to terms with a sort of martyrdom and resolves to die beautifully. She hides the last moments of her illness from her husband (I find this completely inexplicable, again.) It's a good death and there's some great speeches about death being a sort of old friend by now. It's treated extremely classily and well. I kept tensing for christian moralizing which never came (thank goodness.) There's a bit of sexism in there as well (the woman's vivacity mainly is bent toward throwing awesome parties and buying wicked dresses (!) This is the 30s after all.) The film surprised me in how seriously it approached its subject. Apart from a few small excursions into melodrama, the woman's death is kept centre stage. The ending descends a bit into pathos, but where else could it go? I found the film pretty good. It doesn't have that oh-so-clever quality I like, but instead it has a more enduring, guileless simplicity, a sort of wisdom.