The Letter (1940) – DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort
screenplay by Howard Koch, based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham
directed by William Wyler

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Andrew Sarris once defended American film by saying "it completely dominates in the middle ranges, particularly in the good-bad movies and genres." The Letter represents that glorious middle range in all its good-bad glory. Keeping it from the top is its refusal to be anything but surface: despite its origins as a sociopolitical W. Somerset Maugham play, it's played as a straight melodrama, and that reliable workhorse William Wyler ensures that you feel the "basic human drama" without noticing sticky details like issues of class and race. But the surface is smooth, sleek, and shapely and the craftsmanship shows loving care, if not obsession, for rendering the mood and evoking the characters. It's less than a masterpiece, more than a time-killer, and an excellent argument for excursions into the middle.

In one sense, it's hard to think of a current mainstream film that would dare float a heroine like Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis), whom we first meet as she's emptying a revolver into one Geoffrey Hammond. She claims to have been fending off a drunken rapist, and both her husband (a brilliantly restrained Herbert Marshall) and lawyer (James Stephenson) believe her. Sure enough, though, a letter soon turns up addressed to the victim intimating that he and Leslie were lovers. Liar and lawyer must buy the titular missive from dodgy types in cahoots with the deceased's wife (Gale Sondergaard)–and endure white-knuckle tension while the jury deliberates on her verdict. We're locked in a metaphorical room with a character who's far from an angel and caught in the crossfire between sympathy and reproach.

There's no denying that the drama is all literal, possessing no underlying theme, no generalization on human behaviour–it's just a story of a woman caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Missing from the synopsis above are the sinister Asian types scurrying about the periphery, the setting on a Singapore rubber plantation, and the victim's "Eurasian" wife–and those things are missing because they're largely irrelevant to the movie. Buried in the narrative is some critique of the white colonial ruling class as it lives by its own rules, but The Letter is so committed to being a Bette Davis vehicle that it demotes the race/class angle to window dressing. Not only does this mean that the "natives" get the stereotypical shaft, but it also means that the film remains a big meaningless story, one that comes close to letting Davis off the moral hook just for being the star.

That said, if you can get over this inherent shallowness (and stomach Sondergaard's ridiculous Dragon Lady get-up), the film has an undeniable sway in telling its story. Wyler's small mastery of moody lighting gives us too much light when things are looking fraudulently sunny and plenty of shadows when guilt grips the heroine; he also cleverly squeezes people together as admissions are made, while the Howard Koch script walks an ambiguous line almost to the end. Though an impassioned husband-wife encounter grants clemency when maybe it should not, it's still part of a riveting film that keeps the attention and tugs at the emotions. The Letter isn't really about anything other than itself, but it knows that–for better and for worse.

THE DVD
Warner continues its tradition of superior DVD presentations for its classic titles. With its precise definition and subtle rendering of the black-and-white chromatic scale, The Letter's full-frame transfer is as crisp and clear as you can hope for. The Dolby 1.0 mono sound has a range analogous to that of the excellent image. Extras are as follows:

Alternate Ending (9 mins.)
There's not much here that isn't in the final film, except that it cuts a redemptive exchange between Davis and Marshall, making Leslie's comeuppance seem like cosmic justice instead of tragedy. It's not as traditionally satisfying as the one that made the cut, but it has way more integrity.

"Lux Radio Theater Broadcast": 4/21/1941 (60 mins.)
Davis, Marshall, and Stephenson reprise their roles for this radio broadcast. On the one hand, it gets to the point faster than the movie does (and not merely out of necessity); on the other, it pares away extraneous detail to the point of aesthetic impoverishment.

"Lux Radio Theater Broadcast": 3/6/1944 (55 mins.)
Davis and Marshall return, though Stephenson is replaced by Vincent Price. Price proves less authoritative than his predecessor, but the script isn't as bound by fidelity to the film, resulting in an interesting (if slightly broader) structural variation.

The film's trailer completes the package; a trailer for The Aviator runs on start-up.

95 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner