Jezebel

William Wyler's Jezebel (1938) is a remarkable drama. The film inevitably draws comparisons with Gone With the Wind (1939), whose lead role Bette Davis reportedly coveted. But Wyler's movie is far better than that overblown soap opera, couching its melodrama within a much darker framework.

In 1850s New Orleans, headstrong Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) courts Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), an ambitious banker. Julie takes her insouciance towards social mores a step too far. When she arrives at a dress ball in a scarlet dress, Pres disowns her and Julie flees to Halcyon estate with her mother (Fay Bainter). A year later Pres returns from a Northern business trip, with a New York-born wife (Margaret Lindsay). Julie tries to bring Pres back by inciting arrogant bachelor Buck Cantrell (George Brent) into dueling Pres; Pres instead goes to New Orleans. Soon a yellow fever epidemic breaks out, sealing off the city. When Julie learns Pres has fallen victim she must make a painful choice.

Jezebel is a remarkable "woman's picture" that transcends most expectations. Wyler and his writers (including John Huston) make it very hard to sympathize with Julie. She flouts social conventions, marking herself through dress and attitude - behavior which only earns her contempt. In most movies we're expected to cheer for the quirky individualist. Here Julie's so insufferable we (almost) don't blame New Orleans society for their rejection. After Pres's rejection she becomes a virtual shut-in; when he returns Julie dresses in virginal white and stokes memories of their flirtation, which doesn't phase Pres in the slightest. Her deviousness turns Pres's brother Ted (Richard Cromwell) against Buck, leading to even more tragedy. Naturally, redemptive sacrifice is the only out.

Julie operates within strictures of the antebellum South, where everyone's entrapped by arcane honor codes. Jezebel's cast acts out proscribed rituals from which deviations prove disastrous. Women can be damned by wearing the wrong color dress; Pres forces Julie to endure a public humiliation at a ballroom dance. Arguments are settled by guns, like a more genteel Wild West. Yankees like Amy, and even the business-minded Pres, are scoundrels worthy of contempt; Negroes invisible servants. Arguments about slavery hint that such attitudes will entrap the South into Civil War; the plague ravaging Louisiana presages the extinction of this old order. Not exactly subtle, this registers much better than Wind's nauseating bowdlerization of "a dream remembered."

William Wyler again proves himself a masterful director. Early scenes provide ample spectacle without Technicolor, using sprawling sets, moody photography and seamless tracking shots. The plague sequences are remarkably grim; shots of New Orleans streets clogged with processions of fever victims, escorted by militia, feel positively medieval.

Bette Davis scored one of her biggest successes here, winning an Oscar and rescuing her career from doldrums. Davis makes effective use of her brassy, often-abrasive persona; for all her nastiness Julie is naive, expecting others to fall for her affectations. Davis handles a very difficult character well, finding the cutting, playful nastiness between Julie's eccentric facade - yet digging up a strain of nobility, as well. 

Henry Fonda looks impossibly boyish here, doing decent work in a thankless role. George Brent makes an unbearably pompous cad. Donald Crisp (The Sea Hawk) gets a standout role as Pres's business partner and Fay Bainter (who won an Oscar) and Richard Cromwell each give solid turns. Margaret Lindsay has the weakest role, an uncomprehending ingenue until her tragic sacrifice.

Jezebel is a solid melodrama. Worth watching alone for Bette Davis's sparkling performance, it holds up better today than... okay, let's not mention it again.