• Post category:Movies
  • Post last modified:April 11, 2020

The Letter: Damnation in Writing

FASCINATING, TANTALIZING AND DANGEROUS!

The production of The Letter wasn’t entirely smooth. Bette Davis had a major argument with director William Wyler about a climactic scene where her character delivers the film’s most famous, and shocking, line to her husband. Davis and Wyler disagreed on how she should play her role in that scene, and Wyler ended up winning the argument. Davis continued to believe that she was right, but also later said that she respected his choice as an artist. Davis was proud of The Letter and knew that it was going to be a good movie.

James Stephenson also had his quarrels with Wyler and Davis was the one who had to talk him into returning to the set whenever he stormed out. She was right. The Letter received seven Oscar nominations; even though it didn’t win anything, it has become a classic.

A shot is heard
Somewhere in British Malaya, on a dark night when only the moon is watching, a shot is heard. A man stumbles out of a house, followed by a woman who puts several more bullets in his body. She’s Leslie Crosbie (Davis), the wife of the rubber plantation manager Robert Crosbie (Herbert Marshall), and she tells a servant to go get him. Working at one of the plantations, Robert eventually comes home together with his attorney, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), and a police inspector. Leslie tells them that the man she shot, a well-known Brit called Geoff Hammond, was making unwelcome advances, forcing her to use her gun. Leslie is treated with a great deal of sympathy by the police and Robert, but Howard has his qualms.

As Leslie awaits her trial, Howard is approached by his clerk (Sen Yung) who shows him the copy of a letter that he says Leslie sent to Hammond. In the letter, Leslie tells Hammond that her husband is away and demands him to come see her. Howard realizes that the letter will send Leslie to her death… but there’s a price for it.

Inspired by a real-life trial
The story was inspired by a real-life case, a 1911 murder trial in Kuala Lumpur that shocked colonial Brits. Ethel Prudlock, who had shot a man to death, was found guilty and sentenced to death. In spite of her crime, the verdict upset many and even her husband pleaded for her to be pardoned, which eventually happened. W. Somerset Maugham wrote a play based on the affair, but when the time came for the most famous and successful of the screen adaptations, the ending had to be changed. In the play and the first filmization, the lead character gets away with murder. But in 1940, the Hays Office could not accept a story where murder went unpunished, so a new ending had to be written. Still, there were a few cases in the era of the Production Code when the meddling resulted in interesting creative decisions.

The new ending for The Letter is visually striking; together with cinematographer Tony Gaudio, Wyler creates a haunting, heated and mysterious colonial atmosphere where Davis’s character opens the picture with her fateful crime and then ends it by facing some kind of justice; there’s no way to escape the sweaty environs here. Those sequences bookend a thrilling examination of how easily the colonial community where the Crosbies are members can be manipulated.

Davis is obviously perfect as the two-faced wife who deceives her gullible husband until there’s nowhere to turn anymore and she’s compelled to let him hear the truth. Stephenson is also fine as the attorney who risks his career for his friends and Gale Sondergaard memorable in her quietly intense performance as Hammond’s wife, a woman who will have her vengeance. 

The Letter 1940-U.S. 95 min. B/W. Produced and directed by William Wyler. Screenplay: Howard Koch. Play: W. Somerset Maugham. Cinematography: Tony Gaudio. Music: Max Steiner. Cast: Bette Davis (Leslie Crosbie), Herbert Marshall (Robert Crosbie), James Stephenson (Howard Joyce), Frieda Inescourt, Gale Sondergaard.

Trivia: Previously filmed as The Letter (1929); remade as The Unfaithful (1947) and the TV movie The Letter (1982).

Quote: “With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.” (Davis)

 

IMDb

What do you think?

0 / 5. Vote count: 0

Got something to say?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.