JEZEBEL. (1938) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

JEZEBEL. (1938) DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER.

BASED ON THE 1933 PLAY BY OWEN DAVIS.

STARRING BETTE DAVIS, HENRY FONDA, GEORGE BRENT, DONALD CRISP, FAYE BAINTER AND SPRING BYINGTON.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a sweeping melodrama set in the ‘antebellum’ period of the Deep South of America, a beautiful word for an ugly period of history, namely, the years of the ‘slave trade,’ from the late 1700s to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. I had the good fortune to see it on the big screen lately and it looked gorgeous, considering it’s nearly a century old.

Bette Davis plays Julie Marsden, a Southern belle engaged to be married to Henry Fonda’s banker character, Preston Dillard. Preston is a handsome and indulgent fiancé, but the wilful Julie, spoiled, pampered and used to getting her way in everything, pushes him too far one night and he leaves her and the city of New Orleans where they live. Would you believe that the cause of it all is a bright red dress…?

A devastated Julie becomes a virtual recluse, until she hears one day that Preston has come back to town. She vows to herself that she will win him back, even if she has to prostrate herself on the floor in front of him and humbly beg his forgiveness for her former contrary ways.

She doesn’t for a second factor in the notion that the wealthy, attractive banker, whom most women would consider to be a terrific catch, might not have returned to New Orleans alone…

There are a few things, aside from Davis and Fonda, that stand out in the film. The first is that the black actors, playing house servants or ‘slaves,’ are clearly there for the comic relief. The old coachman who automatically says ‘youm,’ a contraction of ‘yes ma’am,’ to every instruction he’s issued, gets the biggest laugh of the whole thing.

Everything said by Ti Bat, the adorable little boy servant, and Zette the housemaid, is there in the script purely for laughs. Of course, the film is set in 1852, over a decade before the changes wrought by the American Civil War happened, and it’s made in 1938, when attitudes seemingly were still outdated and, dare I say, a mite prejudiced…?

Domestic violence as we know it was perfectly commonplace in those days and, not only did women not object to it, but they enjoyed it too, according to the little speech given to Preston Dillard by Donald Crisp as Dr. Livingstone, physician and friend to Julie Marsden’s family. (She lives with her Aunt Belle Massey for some reason, maybe in the same way that Scarlett o’Hara goes to Atlanta to stay with her Aunt Pittypat in GONE WITH THE WIND…?)

Speaking of GONE WITH THE WIND, there have always been rumours that Bette Davis was offered the role in JEZEBEL to compensate her for the loss of the part of Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND, the role that famously went to Vivien Leigh. Apparently, though, David O. Selznick never seriously considered Davis for the part of Southern belle, Scarlett o’ Hara.

I adore Bette Davis, but she’s so recognisable and iconic to us now that, if she’d played Scarlett, we’d all have been like, oh, look,  there’s Bette Davis playing Scarlett o’Hara, whereas with Vivien Leigh, we really believe that she is Scarlett, and she takes us with her on that whole epic journey. Does that make sense?

Also, apparently Warner Brothers wanted Cary Grant for the role of Preston Dillard, which I think would have been a disaster. He’d have been all jokes and slapstick comedy in his funny, jerky British accent and I’m just not sure that he’d have had the gentle gravitas that Henry Fonda brought to the role. And imagine Cary Grant struck down by the yellow fever? I just don’t think people would have bought it. Whereas Henry Fonda suffers divinely, lol.

Speaking of yellow fever, a lot of folks believe that it originated in Africa, and possibly came to America on the slave ships, so I don’t know what I could say to that that wouldn’t be judgemental and along the lines of, oh well, I guess y’all shouldn’t have abducted native African people from their homes and brought them to America to be slaves, so…!

That first episode of television series ROOTS burned an indelible impression on my mind, it was so sad and horribly traumatic. I believe that when I reviewed it at the time, I wrote that it was the African people’s version of the Holocaust, and I’ve seen nothing since then to alter my opinion on that view.

By the way, the outbreak of yellow fever in JEZEBEL is so reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic it’ll make you shudder in remembrance of those two or three messed-up years. Mask-wearing, panic in the streets, quarantines, mass graves when the coffin industry couldn’t keep up with the deaths, sufferers being sent to a leper island… No, wait, that last bit didn’t happen during COVID. I think…