Bette Davis Collection, Volume Three

To quote costar Claude Rains in Deception, Bette Davis is “all eyes and talent,” and both burn bright in six vintage films she made for Warner Bros. between 1939-46. Lesser known than her certified classics, these are not exactly best Bettes, but they are marvelously entertaining and a representative showcase for one of Hollywood's most enduring leading ladies. These films put Davis (and viewers) through the ringer; in fact, few actresses portrayed characters who suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune so grandly, so regally, so tragically, or so deservedly. Just check out John Huston's In This Our Life (1942), this set's unearthed treasure. Bette, flouncing like mad, jilts her fiancée, steals good sister Olivia de Havilland's husband, and promptly drives him to drink and suicide. And she's just getting warmed up! Davis was also very good at being noble. In the prestige project Watch on the Rhine (1943), based on Lillian Hellman's play and adapted for the screen by Dashiell Hammett, she plays the steadfast wife to Paul Lukas, in his Oscar-winning role as a “legendary figure of the underground movement” who carries on his fight against fascism in Washington, D.C. In The Old Maid (1939), based on the novel by Edith Wharton, Bette allows her cousin (Miriam Hopkins) to give her illegitimate child a respectable name, and then—posing as the unsuspecting girl's aunt—must stand by while her offspring grows up spoiled and “horrid.” In All This, and Heaven Too (1940), Davis is a transplanted French schoolteacher who regales her initially scornful students with the true story behind her scandalous past, while Deception (1946) is another ripping melodrama in which the star is a pianist whose reunion with her thought-dead love (Paul Henreid) is threatened by her arrogant and sadistic Svengali-like new boyfriend (Rains). Last but not least is The Great Lie (1941), pitting Bette against Mary Astor, who won an Academy Award as the bitchy concert pianist whose son Bette is raising (a long story, but it involves missing aviator George Brent, whom they both love). These films offer they-don't-make-'em-like-this-anymore pleasures such as lush melodramatic scores, hothouse emotions, quotable dialogue, and, of course, indelible character actors at their peaks. DVD extras include audio commentaries on all of the films except The Old Maid and The Great Lie, as well as old fashioned “Night at the Movies” features on each disc—theatrical previews, newsreels, short subjects, and Warner Bros. cartoons. Highly recommended. (D. Liebenson)