Dark Victory
Dark Victory (1939)
★★★★ / ★★★★
Bette Davis stars as a lively twenty-four-year-old woman who was diagnosed with a brain tumor by a doctor (George Brent) who she eventually became romantically entangled with. After the surgery, she was given about ten months to live but her best friend (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and doctor chose not to tell her what would inevitably happen. Aside from the unethical choice that the doctor made (I’m assuming that perhaps it was permitted back in the day), I thought this film was tremendous in every way. I was hooked the moment Davis entered the doctor’s office because their interaction was believable. I saw elegance in how the lead character initially didn’t want to share anything about her condition to the way she slowly opened up and placed her full trust to a man she’d never met. I especially enjoyed Davis as a socialite who lived her life to the fullest but was in complete denial about her debilitating health. As she made her way through certain crowds, there was subtlety in her acting–the little looks she gave to people who she thought were being fake or stupid were amusing to watch. I completely believed that she was the kind of woman who would say or do something outrageous and get away with it with flying colors. I thought there was something heartbreaking about the way she evolved from someone who was so afraid of death to someone who eventually learned to accept it. I couldn’t help but feel moved in the end when she eventually learned to be strong for her friends just as when her friends were strong for her prior to her surgery. I really felt like the picture came full circle and the movie gave me great satisfaction even though the subject matter was essentially sad. Although the film was about a patient who had a terminal disease, I loved that it still had a bit of comedy and romance. The movie could have easily been distracted with sudden shifts in tones and unnecessary side stories (not to mention the easy temptations of getting too melodramatic to get more tears from the audiences) but the script was tight and the overall product had a great sense of pacing because each scene had a purpose. Directed by Edmund Goulding, “Dark Victory” is definitely one of the best movies of 1939, a year in which many movies were worthy of Best Picture winners. “Dark Victory” is one of those movies that made me wish movies of today had just the right amount of dosage in terms of delivery. It’s simple but it had laser-like focus on what it wanted to accomplish.
