CHASING OSCAR - Road to Madness

BETTE DAVIS 

as Fanny Trellis in Mr. SKEFFINGTON (1944)
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In 1914, in New York, Fanny Trellis is a shallow futile selfish woman surrounded by suitors and without any other preoccupation but her beauty. Her brother Trippy Trellis embezzles commission from the Skeffington Bank, the wealthy Job Skeffington goes to Trellis' house to charge the amount back. He falls in love for Fanny and she marries him to save Trippy. Fanny gets pregnant, but her selfishness destroys their marriage. Years later, when Fanny loses her beauty, she realizes that a woman is beautiful only when she is loved.

"Nonsense. A woman is beautiful when she has eight hours' sleep and goes to the beauty parlor every day. And bone structure has a lot to do with it too."

                                         - Fanny Trellis

Bette Davis received her eighth Oscar nomination, playing the renowned beauty Fanny Trellis, who still puts on the façade of the outside that she has money. The beautiful and vain Fanny can have any man that she wants to marry. Bette Davis puts together a detailed characterization of a vain, selfish, coquette, a calculated portrayal of a calculating woman.

All those aspects are well-executed by Miss Davis. Otherwise her performance is empty and flat. She doesn’t manage to give the depth the character needs to really shine. Even the superficiality of her character is not well shown. There is no progression in her acting: her voice is unusually always high, her eyes always wide open, she is very mannered, and she is always overacting. Even when she learns her brother has passed away, there's nothing, she's still just a bit over the top. For someone who loved unconditionally her brother, she fails to give any real emotions. In this film, Bette Davis is overexposed. Even when her character is getting old and her beauty fades, she’s the same Fanny since the beginning, of course always selfish, but she doesn’t show rightly her inner struggles. She keeps doing the same things in the entire film, whereas we have already understood that she vainly lives for her beauty. She always exaggerates and gives a very implausible performance. She often caricatures herself. Despite the great versatility of Bette Davis, her performance in this film doesn’t worth her talent. She fails to express the struggle of her character when her beauty fades. Her performance is empty. She is in almost the entire movie, but nothing is really worthy or exciting. We're not used to see Bette Davis that way. 


[As Fanny's long-suffering husband, Claude Rains is wonderful. The finest scene in the movie is his, and Davis is not in it: It’s the scene, at the restaurant where he expresses her deep love to his daughter. He is very open and raw expressing his feelings. It's the only touching moment in the film.]

"This is a star vehicle in extremis. There's no movie here, really, just Davis and her Role."

                                                                                               - Slant Magazine

Despite the terrible writing, the role itself is really meaty but Bette fails to create it on screen. She’s always on the same note whereas the character is actually very complex. She never makes us understand her character, the way she react or her obsession for youth and beauty. Bette Davis as great as she is, never makes us feel the character believable or authentic. It is a one woman show, at the expense of the film.

★★★★★