I immediately found this title a little odd, because Bette Davis's face takes up the poster. Indeed, her character of Fanny Trellis/Skeffington gets the bulk of the screen time and is no less interesting than Claude Rains as Job Skeffington. Why not Mrs. Skeffington? Surely her marriage in the first act comes as no surprise to any viewer, especially those who read even the briefest summaries.
Fanny starts out as the most sought-after bachelorette in New York in 1914. Little do her suitors know that her aristocratic parties hide the truth: Her good-for-nothing brother Trippy has spent the bulk of their fortune, and his crimes to acquire more only dig them deeper. But Trippy's titular boss already takes an interest in Fanny and offers himself as a rich and forgiving husband -- even letting her continue to entertain suitors. Of course, marriages of "convenience" have a habit of being inconvenient in other ways.
I don't think any character says "divorce," but that's clearly what happens. Job still loves Fanny and shows voluntary generosity in the division of wealth, but she had never really loved him. Complicating matters is their daughter, who favors her dad and resents her mom for giving her up easily.
The characters seem so far over the top -- arrogant Fanny, a plethora of lame suitors, overly tolerant Job, punchable Trippy -- that I soon checked on IMDb whether it was supposed to be at least partly comedy. It's not, nor did I laugh. The tragic aspects become clearer in the third act.
If Netflix can spoil a few moments in the third act, then so can I. Stop reading here if you must.
An illness, however temporary, claims much of Fanny's remaining money and facial beauty. For the first time in her adulthood, she neither feels nor is treated like a catch. As you can guess, this leads to eventual self-improvement and discovery. This being Hollywood, she's not as hideous as she claims, but I was impressed to see Davis of all women sporting visible wrinkles from time to time.
I was also impressed at what happened to Job. We don't hear much from him after the divorce, since he moves to Europe -- at a very bad time for a Jew. It turns out that The Great Dictator wasn't the only early '40s feature to acknowledge the horror of concentration camps. That said, we're left to wonder how he managed to get out alive, however damaged, before 1945. Most likely the writer didn't know enough.
You know, if Mr. Skeffington's Judaism was common knowledge (despite a name change at Ellis Island), it might explain why Fanny's suitors redoubled their efforts during her marriage. Job said wryly that they now saw it as their duty to "rescue" her. OK, they probably sensed that she didn't love him, but they may well have been judging from their own feelings alone.
Like another movie stretching across 30 years, it's more than 140 minutes in length. I wound up splitting my viewing over two nights. Worth it? I think so. It doesn't fully achieve what it's supposed to, but Davis and Rains give it their best. I understand they really enjoyed working together, too.
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