HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964) *** Man, that Bette Davis...what an actress...I mean, when she was supposed to go off...the girl just fucking went off!!!!! I kind of see why everyone insists on comparing this to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? : lonely old house, Robert Aldrich working those twisted Hitchcock variations (we all think Albert invented all this stuff, now) in black & white, mystery with all kinds of turns and innumerable surprising lurking, but... It's certainly not the film it could have been if Joan Crawford had been able to deal with Bette, hadn't left. Bette is brilliant in every scene-the more emotional the better and no one's ever gone straight over the top with more vitality or aplomb-but there's just never anyone up with her (including Aldrich) in that rarefied air. Agnes Moorehead has some great scenes, but it's never anywhere near enough and she's wildly inconsistent. (In fact there's not a credible Southern drawl in the whole film, but everything else is so right than you manage not to notice) Olivia de Havilland gets some serious bitch and tension going, but it never gets much past reminding you how much better Bette is. And Joan, too. Joseph Cotten? You're joking right? He's ok, nothing wrong with him, Bruce Dern, George Kennedy....fine actors but certainly not ready and an open question whether they or anyone else ever would be. The transcendence of Bette's inquisitive concern and fury is such to reduce one to tears of laughter of some uncertain origin and decided moral ambiguity.
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