FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
MR. SKEFFINGTON (1944)
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
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