1004 Now, Voyager

[FrauBlucher]

Now, Voyager



Nervous spinster Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is stunted from growing up under the heel of her puritanical Boston Brahmin mother (Gladys Cooper), and remains convinced of her own unworthiness until a kindly psychiatrist (Claude Rains) gives her the confidence to venture out into the world on a South American cruise. Onboard, she finds her footing with the help of an unhappily married man (Paul Henreid). Their thwarted love affair may help Charlotte break free of her mother's grip—but will she find fulfillment as well as independence? Made at the height of Davis's reign as the queen of the women's picture and bolstered by an Oscar-winning Max Steiner score, Now, Voyager is a melodrama for the ages, both a rapturous Hollywood romance and a poignant saga of self-discovery.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Episode of The Dick Cavett Show from 1971 with actor Bette Davis
• Interview with Paul Henreid from 1980
• Selected-scene commentary on the film's score by professor Jeff Smith
• New interview with film critic Farran Smith Nehme on the making of the film
• New interview with costume historian Larry McQueen
• Two radio adaptations from 1943 and 1946
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Patricia White and a 1937 reflection on acting by Davis

[domino harvey]

Listening to Lee Kline on the HTF podcast (29:22 mark), he mentioned that they are working on Now, Voyager

Interesting choice! This and Mr Skeffington are the only titles from Warners' three huge Davis box sets that I haven't gotten around to yet, so no clue if this is as left field an announcement as it seems. I would guess the package will be very Davis-focused and someone at the label was a fan of this specific film to go after it and not something more well-known from that selection like Jezebel, which WA just announced

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

I plan on doing a fuller write-up in the 40s thread, but, suffice to say, this is quite a strange romantic melodrama––in many ways rough and pulpy, but in other ways astoundingly mature and idealistic about alternate forms of love and revitalizing the way you conceive of beauty. It is absolutely a left-field choice in some ways, but, Cavell did write about it in one of his book collections (Contesting Tears, I think it's called?)

[movielocke]

I remember this as my favorite Davis drama of the ones mentioned here, though Jezebel is very good and Mr Skeffington is superb and more of a criterion type title.

I’m surprised they didn’t go after The Letter. My favorite forties Davis though was The Man Who Came to Dinner which tickled my funny bone perfectly.

[senseabove]

Agreed that it does seem left-field... I like it, and I'll no doubt get it and probably not even wait for a sale to do so, but I would've hoped The Letter or The Little Foxes would be Davis's entrance into the collection, as I think both of those are better on all counts and a better display of her particular talents. I do get the impression that the folks who love this movie really love it, though, so I wouldn't doubt that domino's right and it's someone's pet project choice over the other viable options. And as the original Makeover Movie, I can imagine some interesting context about its production and influence.

[HinkyDinkyTruesmith]

Despite my effusion earlier, I think that The Little Foxes is far superior technically, and just as great emotionally. Now, Voyager however has this strangeness to it that makes it more theoretically interesting though. Either would have pleased me.

[DRW.mov]

Just gotta say as someone who has consumed a great deal of Bette Davis’ catalogue, not only is Now, Voyager my favorite of her films but also the one that seems to most deftly capture her iconography as a star and sort of feels like the obvious choice for Criterion, if any. Much like The Heriess for Olivia and Mildred Pierce for Joan (though there’s a small handful more Joan films I hope make it in soon, namely Borzage’s Strange Cargo)

[Rayon Vert]

I think it's a cut above the typical Davis vehicle but inconsistent and not as good as something like Mr. Skeffington (or Jezebel, The Little Foxes, In This Our Life, Of Human Bondage, quite a few in fact). Care and quality go into the production but notwithstanding some early emotional high points, I thought that by mid-film it started to sag and and got mired in less engaging narrative deployments.

Dark Victory is another one of her popular weepies that I thought was over-rated.

[Cremildo]

It is indeed an interesting star vehicle for Davis, but I think that comedic interlude in Brazil brings it down a notch. I'm usually not one to overemphasize the negative impact of relatively brief scenes or sequences in otherwise perfectly decent films, but that part feels like it belongs to a lesser production. Or maybe it's just because I'm Brazilian and that stupid cab driver irks me to no end.

[Dr Amicus]

It's a long time since I last saw this, but I always thought of it as one of the major Davis films. Certainly I seem to remember seeing it covered in works dealing with melodrama and the woman's film (we did melodrama as a section in my first year film studies course at University) - if it's considered overlooked, I would hazard a guess that's down to a prevalance of auteurist based criticism rather than genre based but that's unsupported by anything more than supposition. Certainly it's a lot of fun and has more than a touch of camp - and like it's British counterpart, Brief Encounter (at least in the sense that both deal with forbidden relationships), it has long had a considerable gay following.

[Black Hat]

Voyager's pretty nonsensical with Davis' transformation paralleling with her hamming levels which by Davis standards is out of control. By the picture's end you're thinking to yourself "wait is this really happening?". Henried is a pretty terrible actor and you better believe Davis knew it too. A very odd film that would benefit from a good set of extras explaining what everybody had in mind. In a lot of ways, since she had her most control over a picture in Voyager, it's the quintessential Davis film. If you fall on the side of that's great you'll love the film, if you fall on the side of she's much better when taking direction you'll dislike the movie intensely. Ultimately I'd agree with Rayon Vert that it's a cut above the typical Davis, but not on the level of Skeffington or especially Little Foxes.

[Roscoe]

I don't think that NOW, VOYAGER's gay following has so much to do with the "forbidden relationship" as it has to do with Charlotte's journey from doubt and self-hating awkwardness to self-acceptance and pride. Charlotte's first steps into that world outside her monstrous mother's Boston brownstone can't help but feel familiar to those who've had to find their way alone in the bigger world, not just the whole "gay" world either.

I've always found this one of Davis' better performances -- I like the dashes of spice that occasionally surface. When, on that first voyage, she's reminded of her mother's attitude about travel and dealing with other travellers, the camera moves in for a tight closeup of her savagely smiling face, saying "I was thinking of my mother!" And that sharp little line when her mother demands to know what she's going to do with her life, when Charlotte replies, "Get a cat and a parrot and live alone in single blessedness."

Love me some LITTLE FOXES, too, even though there's controversy over Davis' take on Regina Giddens, I understand. Never found that SKEFFINGTON thing to be endurable at all.

Yeah, I'll buy NOW, VOYAGER when Criterion releases it.

[colinr0380]

Now, Voyager is great though it has perhaps fallen out of favour in recent years due to its most famous scenes, including its climax, involving romanticisation of smoking as a form of liberation and freedom of expression shared with a partner. Also that final scene has one of the most iconic final lines in cinema ("Don't let's ask for the moon...we have the stars"), perhaps ironically contrasting against "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn"!

[Jonathan S]

Although I'm gay, Now, Voyager's "we have the stars" romantic optimism and transcendence has never appealed to me. In so far as I'm a Davis fan at all, I'm much more of a "What a dump!" guy. I guess my "tell-it-like-it-is" Asperger side dominates and I empathise far more with "evil" Rosa in Beyond the Forest.

[senseabove]

Prefacing this by saying I'm looking forward to a double feature of this and The Letter next month so I can re-evaluate my first and only impressions of both, but while I thought Now, Voyager had a really good Davis performance, it doesn't capture what I think of as her "iconography" as a star. It's overall a sympathetic character—which as Roscoe points out, probably has something to do with why those who love it so much do, even if it/because it also has those moments of spice that are strongly associated with her. What's iconographic about Davis, from Of Human Bondage to Baby Jane, is her willingness to completely eschew bids for sympathy inspired by the character itself. (Dark Victory is the other sympathetic role that, while I enjoy it enough, I wasn't that crazy about... Maybe my opinions about these types of characters will change as I get deeper into her catalog of leading roles, but even odd, deeper cuts that fit the un-sympathetic bill like The Star I enjoy more.) In her best performances, sympathy may be warranted from the situation, but she goes all in for the bitterness those situations warrant from her character. I think she was one of the best at wringing great roles out of mediocre productions because of it, e.g. Of Human Bondage is of interest really only because of Davis, both her full-tilt performance and its place in Hollywood history, but otherwise is a pretty bad movie, in my opinion. I did a spit-take when I got to it in Rayon Vert's list—the rest of which I'm a big fan, though I've not seen Skeffington—and I'm even, for reasons that mostly still escape me, a fan of Leslie Howard.

All that said, it's nice to have the sympathetic change of pace with Davis, and this thread has me more excited to revisit it.

[knives]

I get this one confused with The Heiress all the time. Longer post later, but this is point one of why I find Rapper to be the worst '40s director.

[Shrew]

To put this in perspective, after All About Eve and Baby Jane, this is the Bette Davis film with the most views on both letterboxd and imdb and has fairly high ratings on both. Jezebel isn't that far behind, but it's not like Criterion is really going against the grain here. It is the sort of film that gets overlooked in auteur studies, but as others have noted it's picked up a following in feminist and queer circles.

[swo17]

Coming in November with All About Eve!

[swo17]

these don’t share anything but a star, I don’t think their threads should be combined

They're clearly paired releases but fine since Eve already has a dedicated thread

[senseabove]

Revisited this last night, on the aforementioned double bill with The Letter, and it held up better than I expected. Seeing it so soon after my first go-round with The Heiress made it differently interesting, given the overlapping subjects of young women dominated by a controlling, dismissive parent and finding their way out from under them, to radically different ends. In comparison, it's almost admirable solely for being completely anti-tragic, while also eschewing a typical happy ending. Visually, Rapper is uninspired; it pretty much all rests on Davis. I had forgotten that the entirety of the makeover is a toe-to-head once-over—I wonder if something got trimmed there... I can only dream what a Siegel-cut makeover montage transforming Davis from caterpillars to eyebrows, flats to pumps, helmet-hair to coiffure would look like. If the ending is still a little shaky, in spite of its famous, epigrammatic last line, it does squeeze just enough justification into Davis's last speech and a few prior hints that, if you know where it's going, it's a little more convincing

SpoilerShow

that she's truly committing to independence—and "spinsterdom"—by choice, and not from some sense of fear or mid-century propriety or morality. The "cat and a parrot and blessed singledom" line, for example, buried in round one by what follows, is salient the second time, not just a laugh. If the first half of your life was truly dominated by another person, why even risk the second half.

It is all a bit muddled, still, but I'm looking forward to what the extras can illuminate. I hope Nehme's interview is substantial.

[FrauBlucher]

Quite lovely.....beaver

[Elizabeth Corday]

I have a thought. What are the chances Stella Dallas would enter the collection? I say this because both NV and Stella Dallas are based on novels by Olive Higgins Pouty.

[Matt]

There is probably some chance, but not a big chance. I believe the Samuel Goldwyn Productions films are currently distributed but not owned by Warner Bros., and they have not shown much interest in these films beyond some adequate Blu-rays for a few titles. And Criterion has never distributed anything from Goldwyn in the DVD-BD-UHD era. It seems like if they were going to, The Best Years of Our Lives, Ball of Fire, Dodsworth, or Wuthering Heights would be the first logical option.