THE GREAT LIE (Warner Bros. 1941) Warner Home Video

Based on Polan Banks’ rather maudlin novel, Edmund Goulding’s The Great Lie (1941) is a convoluted ‘contemporary’ soap opera with its prerequisite of intrigues and deceptions to resurrect varying shades of another Davis classic, 1939’s big hit, The Old Maid. On this outing however, the film is hampered by an ineffectual screenplay from Leonard J. Coffee – contrived, pedestrian and unmemorable. Mary Astor turns in an Oscar-winning performance as the embittered hellcat/artist who will stop at nothing to claw her way into a man’s heart. Astor became known for her rather racy real life after her personal diary fell into public domain. Clearly, she relishes the part of the ‘wicked woman’ in this story. And Astor, ironically, is given almost as much screen time as our star – usual for Davis to give away so much of the picture to another woman, particularly one she neither admired nor, at intervals, could even tolerate, thanks to her own professional jealousies.

Although Bette Davis had readily fluctuated between playing both ‘nice’ and ‘bad’ girls on the screen, on this outing, she seems a conflicted mess – too nice at intervals, then, suddenly, with more than a hint of that razor-sharp bitterness we are used to admiring from her flawed heroines – a strange amalgam of traits to render her performance as Maggie Patterson quite unsympathetic. Maggie is the jilted former love of aviator and lady’s man, Peter Van Allen (George Brent). Playing fast and loose agrees with Pete – especially when his wild carousing leads into a spur of the moment marriage to famed concert pianist and notorious man trap, Sandra Kovak (Mary Astor). However, after several weeks of raucous partying, Pete tires of Sandra; all the more, when his personal attorney and close friend, Jock H. Thompson (Jerome Cowan) informs Pete that his nuptials are null and void. It seems Sandra ‘got her dates mixed up’ and was not legal divorced from her first husband on the day she married Peter.

Wasting no time in returning to Maryland, Pete woos Maggie. Recognizing how painful their first split was, Maggie’s maid, Violet (Hattie McDaniel) makes valiant strides to thwart their getting back together again, alas - to no avail. Pete and Maggie’s love affair blossoms and Maggie flies to Philadelphia to confront Sandra with the news, only to discover Sandra is, in fact, pregnant with Pete’s child. Not knowing Sandra’s condition, Pete makes ready plans to fly to South America on a mission for the U.S. government. His plane goes down somewhere over the jungle and he is presumed dead. In the meantime, Maggie appeals to Sandra’s selfishness, imploring her to adopt the as yet unborn baby and claim it as her own. A deal is struck whereby Maggie will rear the child while affording Sandra a life of luxury on monies inherited from Pete’s significant estate. The two women retreat to a remote hideaway in Arizona where, on a dark and stormy night, a healthy male child is born.

However, the moment of truth for Maggie arises when Pete is discovered alive in the jungle. Returning to his wife and child, Pete is lied to by Maggie; a ruse made more out of nervous guilt than noble anticipation. At this point, Sandra reenters their lives; presumably determined to make Maggie’s life as uncomfortable as possible until she confesses ‘the great lie’ to her husband. Sandra believes Pete will abandon Maggie if he learns the truth – a testament unrealized when Pete decides that, if a decision must be made, he chooses to remain Maggie’s husband and give back his son to the woman who gave him life. Invariably, vintage studio publicity misrepresents this film as a romantic melodrama. Lenore J. Coffee’s screenplay, regrettably, opens the melodrama to the ridicule of an almost ‘screwball’ scenario – the fallout of these flamboyant debaucheries made in and out of the marital love nest of Sandra and Pete with George Brent doing a playful bit of skulking about, discovering of a stack of ruined record albums strewn across the carpet. Indeed, many of the other characters are drawn from pure pulp rather than life with McDaniel’s maid, played strictly as camp.

The pivotal moment, when Pete is presumed dead, is superseded by a rather playfully antagonistic confrontation between Sandra and Maggie, but immediately followed by a hysterical outburst from the grieving widow to his best friend. All in all, the emotional arc of the story with its wild shifts from light-hearted romantic fancy to deadly serious life-altering melodrama, defuses the impact of these polar opposite emotions, rather than strengthening the poignancy of either. In the final analysis, The Great Lie is a minor disappointment; a pleasant enough diversion for die-hard Davis fans from which more should have been expected.

Warner Home Video’s DVD is a tad disappointing. The opening credit sequence is marred by a considerable amount of film grain and image softness. From here, the image improves in overall refinement, though age-related artifacts exist throughout. Unfortunately, several sequences appear to have been sourced from second generation elements. Contrast fluctuates between ample balance and slightly boosted levels. The night sequences at the cabin in Arizona, as example, inexplicably suffers from a faded quality and some very obtrusive edge enhancement besides. Overall, this is a very inconsistent transfer. The audio is Dolby Digital 1.0 mono and presented at an adequate listening level. Extras include Warner Night at the Movies; trailers, newsreels and short subjects. Bottom line: not exactly Davis’ finest hour and, generally, quite disposable entertainment.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

2