Customer Reviews

Jezebel

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Jezebel," directed by William Wyler, opens in New Orleans in 1852. The film tells the story of Miss Julie, a strong-willed Southern belle played with passion and flair by the great Bette Davis. Miss Julie's tempestuous relationship with a handsome gentleman (played by Henry Fonda) is played out in the shadow of both social controversies and a yellow fever epidemic.

"Jezebel" is a superbly produced period piece. The opulent sets and costumes, along with the romantic musical score, contribute well to the overall feel of the film. The black-and-white cinematography is breathtaking; Davis looks positively luminous in many scenes.

The excellent Davis gets solid support from the rest of the excellent cast. But make no mistake: this is Davis' picture, and she commands the screen from her first scene. Her Miss Julie is a flawed but fascinating woman.

This is a thought-provoking film on many levels. The portrayal of Southern culture as strange and alien to Northerners, the fetishization of Southern womanhood (a "frail, delicate chalice," as one male character puts it), the references to the abolitionist controversy, and the depiction of the relationships between black servants and white masters are all fascinating elements in the film, and richly ironic. "Jezebel" is one Hollywood classic that remains compelling and, I believe, open to new critical interpretations.

"Jezebel" was an extrememly important production in 1938 for Warner Brothers. The studio was renowned for its earthy urban stories "torn from the headlines". At the same time, during the mid thirties, it developed a series of mainly second rate "weepies" for Kay Francis, a limited but attractive star who became type cast playing suffering heroines.

With the advent of Bette Davis as a new type of actress, a personality who really wanted to "act", the studio, once they acknowledged both how ambitious and dedicated Davis was, developed her Box Office potential through a series of first rate roles in essentially second rate films such as "Bordertown", "Dangerous" and "Marked Woman". By 1938, they pulled out all stops for Davis with "Jezebel" and so elevated their own status as a studio capable of superb first rate productions, targeted at the female audience. Now they could rank with MGM as a purveyor of quality products in all departments.

To demonstrate their commitment, they imported William Wyler from Goldwyn Studios to direct Davis and assigned a large budget. The film is set in the deep south, complete with magnolias, slaves etc and dripping accents by all. Davis plays the willful Julie Marsden who defies southern conventions and manners and in doing so loses the love of her life, played by Henry Fonda. He marries another and she schemes to get him back, but in doing so causes the death of George Brent in a duel. Davis, however, redeems herself by the end of the film as she learns self sacrifice. The plot probably does not warrant the superb treatment Wyler gives it. The quality of the production elevates the drama immeasurably.

The film was a precursor of "Gone with the Wind" and Davis won her second Oscar for this performance. William Wyler was the director who honed her talent, slowing her down and introducing a subtlety to her work largely missing before. She always acknowledged his contribution to her career with this performance. She also fell in love with him and regretted for the rest of her life that they did not marry. In this film, she really is beautiful and she says that was because she was deeply in love.

The film is perfectly made with Wyler's careful attention to detail. The production ran significantly over budget but Davis intervened to ensure that Wyler was not replaced and could finish it. While Davis dominates, she is superbly supported by Fay Bainter as her shocked aunt. Bainter won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. The men are of less interest. Henry Fonda looks uncomfortable in the period costumes but gives a strong performance. George Brent is not dynamic enough as Buck Cantrell, a part to which Errol Flynn would have been better suited.

The DVD quality is first rate as expected and contains the usual high standard Warner's extras. Janine Basinger's commentary is good except when she explains the motivation of the characters in minute detail, often stating the obvious.

The DVD is available on its own or as part of the great value Bette Davis Collection No 2.

Probably (excluding All About Eve) the finest pictures Bette Davis made were under the direction of the great William Wyler. And Davis never looked better than in this film.
Despite sterling performances from Henry Fonda and George Brent, Fay Bainter and Spring Byington, Henry O'Neil and Donald Crisp, Jezebel is really Davis' movie as the camera caresses her in close ups time and again, and she rewards it's attention with an A - class performance.
Davis also made The Letter and The Little Foxes under Wyler's direction, she loved working with him, his attention to detail, her preparedness to redo scenes over and again until the Master was satisfied (Wyler was known to demand take after take - in some cases, 50 or 60 times - until he got what he was looking for) and of course, the finished product.
Jezebel was made in 1938 as Warner Bros wanted to cash in on the success of the book form of Gone With The Wind, a best seller - and another story of the fall of the South and a headstrong woman whose stubborness costs her the man she loves - and get Jezebel out in the theatres before GTW which was in pre-production, when Jezebel was being shot.
Jezebel is actually set before the Civil War (unlike GTW) in the early 1850's when the South was a thriving place, and men held great store in their honour,and women well versed in meeting the strictly defined code of dress and behaviour that was so fundamental to life in the Olde South.
For reasons known only to herself, Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) decides to ignore such boundaries and when fiance Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda)arrives to take her to the ball, he finds, to his horror that she has chosen to wear a red gown instead of the white one society expects her as a single woman to wear.
She is humiliated by the reaction of her contemporaries at the ball - especially when Pres refuses to allow her to slink away. And when the dance has been completed he takes her home and politely wishes her "Goodbye" not "Good Night", thus breaking their engagement.
This may sound crass in the 2000's, but in 1852's New Orleans Julie's scant regard for the manners of the day and her insensitivity to the feelings of others forced Preston to realise a life to her would be one long never ending battleground.
This is the first copy of Jezebel I have owned - because of the poor quality of the film in the past, I decided against buying one.
But the restoration has been superb and has allowed those of us not old enough to appreciate it's original mint condition on it's cinematic release back in '38 to see this masterpiece the way it was intended.
Bette Davis won an Academy Award for best actress and Fay Bainter won for Best Supporting Actress. Both awards were well earned.
The direction and photography, are wonderful, and despite Warners making Jezebel in black and white, it looks fantastic and gives the viewer a real
sense of the magesty and beauty that was the pre-Civil War south.

Yes, that's the lesson poor Julie (Bette Davis) has to learn in this antebellum South soaper. Because she is too impetuous for her own good, she decides to toy with fiance Pres (Henry Fonda) by wearing a vampish red dress to New Orleans' Olympus Ball, where unmarried gals such as herself are supposed to wear white. But her ploy backfires when she becomes uneasy at the dance; however, his own strong temper makes him make her waltz with him, even though all the other dancers desert the floor. Then, he dumps her, sick of her game-playing. A year passes, and the duly abashed Julie gets news that Pres is finally back in town from his business concerns up North. Now she gladly will wear that white dress, but hey, who's this little miss he's brung from New York? Could it be...? Yep, you guessed it. Before we're done, there will be yellowjack epidemics, runnings through swamps, shocking duels, and a host of hoop skirts.

Well known for being Bette's consolation prize after losing out in the Scarlett stakes, "Jezebel" is a pretty good movie in its own right. Fay Bainter plays her exasperated aunt, trying to talk sense to her headstrong niece; Donald Crisp is the doctor whose warnings of an impending yellowjack epidemic prove true; George Brent is surprisingly good as a Southerner gent who fights more than one duel over Bette, whom he's sweet on. This is an especially interesting performance, because in movies like "42 Street", you can hear Brent's own native Irish brogue just in check, so his lazy drawl is pretty good here.

The cast is a rather large one, as Bette is forever giving or attending a soiree, and for that reason Henry Fonda gets a little short shrift--his character needs to be more defined than what we see here; he's good, but a little too sketchy for such an integral character. Margaret Lindsay plays his Northern wife Amy; a thankless sort of role, though she is pretty, but obviously toned down some so as not to compete with Bette in her own movie.

The treatment of slavery is interesting in the movie in the respects where it differs from the more famous, "Gone with the Wind". Julie is a more liberal mistress than Scarlett, promising that darned red dress to her body slave and permitting a male slave to continue to eat his dinner while she questions him about how he made his way to the plantation through the swamps. Dinner guests talk quite freely about their hatred for abolitionists, which is not really depicted in GWTW. In GWTW, Ashley, for instance, makes a statement about how he was going to free his father's slaves once they became his own. That's the furthest thing from anyone's mind in "Jezebel"--no one's trying to sound whitewashed here. In general, the slave population seem more intelligent here than in the other movie, where only Hattie McDaniel is permitted that luxury. Two different studios, two different takes on the matter.

While nowhere near the budget of "Gone with the Wind", "Jezebel" still manages to create its own mood of a vanished civilization, a world where gentlewomen are sometimes hussies who are nonetheless treasured by some menfolk (though not all) who will fight a duel over them as easily as they'd sip a julep. Davis did manage to win her second Oscar for this movie; I'm not quite sure what the competition was. Arrange your own hoops around you, and settle down for an intriguing trip down south with "Jezebel".

In 1938 Bette Davis was a beautiful captivating actress who auditioned and lost for "Gone With the Wind" like every other female star did, with one difference, she starred in "Jezebel" winning an Oscar for Best Actress the year before.

"Jezebel" like Scarlet manipulated men with her destructive flirtatous desires. The setting was 1852 New Orleans pre-Civil War but abolotionists were abundant & the southern & northern relations were already politically strained. Davis's is outstanding in her role and quite beautiful. Henry Fonda & George Brent are her victims & pawns in her game chess. This movie even today remains as a classic Golden Hollywood film.

Standard Format this Black & White film is a great Warner Brothers picture. Only extra feature is a theatrical trailer. This is a great addition to your DVD library. Enjoy.

Since Warner Bros. rushed "Jezebel" to beat "Gone with the Wind," it's probably going to be forever known as the Southern costume drama that ISN'T "Gone With the Wind."

That's a shame, because "Jezebel" is a wonderful movie in its own right -- it's a smaller, more intimate story about a love triangle, and a girl who loves more than is good for anyone. Bette Davis sweeps away all the other actors in a brilliant performance, right up to the cliffhanger ending.

Julie Marsden (Davis) is a fiery, rebellious Southern Belle, who flouts the propriety that her stuffed-shirt fiancee Preston (Henry Fonda) clings to. But then she shocks everyone by showing up at a white-gown ball in bright red, and Preston breaks it off for good. A year later, he brings his Northern wife Amy (Margaret Lindsay) to New Orleans.

Julie is shocked and angry, and immediately begins planning to somehow win Preston back to her, because "I'm part of you!" But her plots slowly unravel when a friend of Preston's is killed in a duel because of her, and Preston himself is caught in a yellow fever plague.

It's hard to see why anyone compares "Jezebel" to "Gone with the Wind" -- it doesn't pretend to be epic, and it's a simple love triangle with a very different conclusion. What it does have is a lot of passion and fire, and an anti-heroine that isn't seen very often even in modern movies.

This movie is just soaked in the South, to the point of oversaturation. Mint juleps, hoop skirts, and magnolias in the moonlight. Fortunately it has some solid directing as well as atmosphere, such as the scene where Preston whirls the red-clad Julie onto the dance floor. As they sweep into the center of the room, all the other dancers quietly sweep to the edges.

Bette Davis deserved every gleam of her Oscar for this role. Her Julie is spoiled, reckless and a tad amoral, but she's always likable for her passion, wildness and love of freedom. She doesn't mean any harm to anyone, but she's truly desperate for the man she loves. Her last few scenes in this movie -- especially the desperate plea to Amy -- are simply magnificent.

Fonda doesn't fare quite as well as the stuffy Pres, and it's hard to see why Julie adores him. But the supporting cast is quietly excellent, such as Fay Bainter, George Brent, and Lew Payton in an uncredited but quietly graceful performance as the butler Cato.

Rather than a Southern epic, "Jezebel" is only about one woman, who learns about the nature of real love in the worst circumstances. Bette Davis as her most compelling.

"Jezebel" is a marvelous vehicle for Bette Davis, and won her an Academy Award, although it may have prevented her from starring as Scarlett O'Hara in Selznick's "Gone With the Wind." Although it features a rather a pot-boiler of a plot, set in New Orleans against the gathering stormclouds of Civil War America, Davis's Miss Julie shines as a headstrong, passionate girl, determined to flout convention to have her way.

Yellow fever, endemic to the New Orleans environment with its undrained swamps and bad sewers, strikes at the heart of Miss Julie's world, and she grows as a character and wins redemption in the way she meets a crisis.

Davis is simply superb and makes the whole production come alive in this well-deserved Oscar winning role. Highly recommended.

Bette Davis proves that she is one of this century's greatest perfomers in Jezebel. One of the most electrifying sequences in all of movie history has got to be her dance with Henry Fonda when after she has stubbornly decided to wear a blood-red dress to a debutante ball, she is forced against her will by Fonda to dance with him on an empty dance floor with all of society glaring on her impropriety (all of the debutantes are wearing white--- her red dress signifying sinfulness and a probability that she is not a virgin). A showcase for grand and exquisite acting.

Warner Bros. supposedly made this film to beat MGM's "Gone With The Wind" to the box office. "Jezebel" doesn't hold a candle to GWTW but it stands firm on it's own merit---that being the fine treatment given to the story based on the old play and the performance of Bette Davis as Julie (i.e Jezebel). Whether she deserved the Oscar or not is another matter but she makes the other cast seem like cardboard cut-outs. Julie is a spoiled headstrong antebellum vixen who drives men to distraction and/or duels to the death in this case. She shames herself and her family with her extremes until she must repent by heroic means. Not a weeper as some may think, but a Southern drenched tale of irony set around the time of the Civil War. Davis is pretty here and beautifully costumed. She flounces around with hoop skirts a-whirling and eyes a-flashing and her accent is properly proper. A young Henry Fonda and a stalwart George Brent round out the suitors who duel for Julie ending in tragedy. I find this film a matter of taste but I still give it 5 stars. It's a genuine classic.

The tagline for the film "Jezebel" was "The South's Greatest Love Story," which certainly reflects the same sort of audacity Robert E. Lee evinced at the battle of Chancellorsville since pretty much everybody in the United States was reading "Gone With the Wind" in 1938 and wondering when David O. Selznick was going to cast someone as Scarlett O'Hara and start making the movie. Bette Davis was not going to get to play Scarlett so instead she Julie Marsden, another Southern belle with a fiery temper. The Academy certainly did not think she was playing a second-rate Scarlett O'Hara, because Davis earned the Oscar for Best Actress that year.

Since it is impossible not to hear the echoes of Margaret Mitchell's novel in the plot of "Jezebel," just enjoy the ride. It seems that Julie is upset with her fiance Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), and intends to embarrass him at the Olympus Ball, the main social event in New Orleans where their engagement will be formally announced. Instead of wearing the traditional white gown worn by unmarried women, Scarlett shows up in a Julie dress, I mean Julie shows up in a red dress (unfortunately this is a black & white film, but you get the idea). However, her gambit backfires, the engagement is broken, and three years later Ashley, I mean, Preston arrives at Miss Julie's plantation with his bride Melanie, I mean, Amy (Margaret Lindsay). The climax of the film comes when a yellow fever epidemic sweeps New Orleans and strikes down Preston. Will Miss Julie risk her life to care for the man she loves? Hey, this is the south's greatest romance, is it not? By its own admission.

You might find Fonda a bit stilted as a dashing Southern gentleman, but this is Bette's film from start to finish. Both director William Wyler and Warner Bros' Studios helped fashion a superior character study with solid production values. Wyler would go on to direct Davis to other noted successes in "The Letter" (1940) and "The Little Foxes" (1941). Of course, Vivien Leigh would win the Oscar the following year and the two roles certainly have in common the fact they could not possibly have been viewed with more a critical eye by movie audiences.

Best Romantic Lines: (1) "I'm terribly sorry to be late. I had trouble with the colt....So sorry, but you know, when a colt gets high-handed, teach him his manners right now or ruin him."
(2) "Wasn't that memory more real than anything she had to give to you? Oh, don't be cross with me, Pres, just tell me. You must." (3) "I'm askin' for the chance to prove I can be brave and strong and unselfish. Help me, Amy. Help me make myself clean again as you are clean. Let me prove myself worthy of the love I bear him."

If you like "Jezebel," then check out these other films on the AFI's list: #2 "Gone With the Wind." Why? Sheesh, were you not paying attention to anything I said above?