A very long and very boring soap opera that finds Bette Davis taking care of Charles Boyer's children, much to the disapproval of Boyer's wife, played as a shrill harridan by Barbara O'Neil (most known to me as the mother of Scarlett O'Hara in the previous year's "Gone with the Wind").
Though set in France, the film could be taking place anywhere as far as the actors and filmmakers are concerned. Authenticity is pretty much an afterthought -- Davis attempts something resembling a French accent, but the result is an oddly stilted and clipped way of talking; O'Neil doesn't attempt an accent at all. And the four children (one of them Virginia Weidman, who played Dinah in "The Philadelphia Story") could be straight off the farms of Nebraska.
Davis is asked to be reserved and gentle, which is never as fun as when she's playing a character that gets to let loose. The story just goes on and on long past the point where you really care about what happens, and it doesn't help that the framing device -- which finds Davis relating the story as a flashback to a group of students -- removes any suspense surrounding how things will turn out.
Anatole Litvak directs with no discernible style whatsoever, and Max Steiner provides a score that never quits. The melodrama is ladled on like maple syrup, and some of it is just as sickly sweet.
Grade: B-
Though set in France, the film could be taking place anywhere as far as the actors and filmmakers are concerned. Authenticity is pretty much an afterthought -- Davis attempts something resembling a French accent, but the result is an oddly stilted and clipped way of talking; O'Neil doesn't attempt an accent at all. And the four children (one of them Virginia Weidman, who played Dinah in "The Philadelphia Story") could be straight off the farms of Nebraska.
Davis is asked to be reserved and gentle, which is never as fun as when she's playing a character that gets to let loose. The story just goes on and on long past the point where you really care about what happens, and it doesn't help that the framing device -- which finds Davis relating the story as a flashback to a group of students -- removes any suspense surrounding how things will turn out.
Anatole Litvak directs with no discernible style whatsoever, and Max Steiner provides a score that never quits. The melodrama is ladled on like maple syrup, and some of it is just as sickly sweet.
Grade: B-