Friday, April 16, 2021

Dangerous (1935)

 There's not many reasons to watch this film other than it won Bette Davis her first Oscar. 

She's solid as Joyce Heath, a brilliant stage actress, who is known for being jinxed. She's now a raging alcoholic but luckily, she runs into Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) who has idolized her since he saw her on stage. He rescues her, despite her being completely ungrateful. She does recover and Don decides to revitalize her career and proposes to her to boot.

But she refuses to tell him the truth, she's already married to a man whose miserable because of her but won't let her go even though it would be better for both of them. So she crashes a car into a tree and nearly succeeds in killing her husband, Gordon (John Eldredge).

However, unlike other Bette Davis films, she atones for her sins, manages to become a successful and visits her injured husband in the hospital. 

Still, despite the trite and rather boring and overwrought plot, Davis is still great, though this performance is nothing compared to the ones she would deliver later in much, much better films. Too bad the chemistry between Davis and Tone was non-existent. That might have helped the film. Grade: B

Side Notes:

-Davis almost always plays a rich character.

-The only two minorities in this film are servants and Davis treats her maid wretchedly.  

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