MR. SKEFFINGTON (1944)
Directed by: Vincent Sherman.
Produced & Written by: Julius J. Epstein & Philip G. Epstein, based on the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim.
Director of Photography: Ernest Haller.
Edited by: Ralph Dawson.
Music by: Franz Waxman.
Released by: Warner Home Video.
Country of Origin: USA. 145 min. Not Rated.
With: Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, Richard Waring, George Coulouris & Marjorie Riordan.
DVD Features: Commentary by director Vincent Sherman. "Mr. Skeffington: A Picture of Strength" featurette. Trailer. English & French audio. English, French & Spanish subtitles.

This watermark in Bette Davis archaeology has the actress outfitted as vain New York blue blood Fanny Trellis, who loses her fortune and marries into money to bail out her alcoholic brother. Married to a Jewish husband whom she doesn’t love, Fanny clings to her social superiority until disease eventually decorticates her beauty. Although this 1944 film has the chutzpah to address - however indirectly - anti-Semitism and Nazism without being a war film, what really makes the film noteworthy is its saccharine recipe. It's a concoction from an old Hollywood cookbook: a "woman’s picture" vehicle featuring Davis, gowns by Orry-Kelly, and the cinematic fluttering of Franz Waxman's orchestra. It's certainly a tasty Warner cupcake - a formulaic recipe, which can be overlooked with enough gooey frosting.

DVD Extras: Most of Mr. Skeffington's purchasers will surely be Davis fans looking to get their hands on any of her DVD releases with a quality transfer, regardless of how minor the film or how mediocre the special features. Which is good, because this film is rather minor in the Davis oeuvre and the DVD extras are fairly mediocre. The director's commentary track finds Vincent Sherman repeating multiple stories verbatim multiple times. The high points take place when he veers off-topic into his descriptions of his relationship with Davis, on- and off-set, and the events that led to "daily" on-set squabbles. But such riveting moments are scarce. What could have been an excellent 20-minute interview with the director becomes an awkward two-and-a-half hours of looping conversation. This seems to be largely due to the rigid schema applied to each DVD in the Warner-Davis collection, which consists of a director's track, an original featurette, and the theatrical trailer regardless of how worthwhile or even applicable they are to each film.

The featurette, “Mr. Skeffington: A Picture of Strength,” has the same problems for the same reasons. The commentators do not have much to say about the film; the critical discourse focuses primarily on a brief and generic biopic of Davis, providing information that any Bette Davis fan - and anyone buying this DVD - would have already known. When the commentators discuss the film's pervasive "non-discussion" of anti-Semitism and classism in its volatile 1944 setting, the attempt is not nearly as thorough as it could have been. Worse, the director is relegated outside of such conversations, left to say things like, "This movie is really made on costumes." Another poor decision was to have only the unedited version of Mr. Skeffington available, letting the original theatrical release fall to the wayside. The film, as Sherman describes in his commentary, was edited for a reason. The half-hour of initially deleted scenes includes sequences that are "unnecessary" and "fail," and what could have been an excellent special feature for the truly invested becomes an extra half-hour for us all. Zach Jones
July 17, 2005