Classic Movie Corner

This is a new series of articles in which I will recommend a classic movie. And I mean classic! If you haven't seen these then you are missing out on what has been borrowed from to make today's great movies. It had to start somewhere and these movies are it!

One of my favorite movies is Now, Voyager (1942, Warner Bros.). Starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains (both of Casablanca fame) this movie was made at a time when actors, even what we would call super stars of today, made over twenty movies a year. Each studio, in a sense, owned the actors that worked for them. They weren't making "blockbusters" just entertainment. Bette Davis had to lobby the studio to get the part (hard to believe) and won it. It is said that she had never thrown herself into a part more and this is evident in her Oscar nominated performance as Charlotte Vale a frumpy spinster Aunt who is driven from her home by an oppressive mother and dissolving confidence and into the care of Dr. Jaquith (Rains) who tries to keep her from total breakdown by therapy and being out of her otherwise emotionally destructive environment.
After her therapy, Charlotte decides to embark, by herself, on a cruise to South America. She has totally transformed herself from absolute frump to stunning beauty (I normally wouldn't call Davis a stunning beauty). I am not a costume person but her ensembles are stunning. On the cruise she meets a group of travellers including Jerry Durrance (Henreid) whose natural friendly charm and good looks grab Charlotte's attention. Jerry notices, not a transformed frump, but a lovely woman. He is fascinated by her distance and mystery. They open up to each other and fall in love. Not in the same sense we have in movies today. There is kissing, clutching, holding...all accompanied by Max Steiner's Oscar winning score...who needs sex scenes? The sizzling scenes between the two stars are enough.
After the cruise, it is back to reality. For Charlotte it is back to face her mother and for Jerry it is back to face the problems at home that include a troubled teenage girl. Charlotte tries to go home and is brilliant the way she faces down her mother, over and over again. Charlotte is even courted by a doctor that never noticed her before even though he had been at the house for dinner parties many times. The dialogue has you glued to every scene in which Charlotte explains very carefully to her mother why she does what she does. After one such fight, her mother has a fall and then eventually a heart attack. Charlotte is filled with guilt and escapes to Dr. Jaquith's sanatorium. There she meets Tina. A teenage girl that reminds Charlotte of herself. She discovers that Tina is Jerry's daughter and decides to take an interest in her. By today's standards of viewing this might seem strange but the innocence of the times do not make it sinister at all. Charlotte helps the girl out of love for Jerry, at first, and then by her genuine love for the girl. Charlotte and Tina are victorious in their transformations and receiving love - from Jerry.
Jerry and Charlotte bump into each other various times during the film, after the cruise, and you will be on the edge of your seat waiting for them to embrace. But Jerry is still married and Charlotte has her morals. We know...that romance is not dead.
And even in the end after agreeing that they shouldn't be romantically involved...all Jerry can say is, "Shall we have a cigarette on it?" And as he lights both cigarettes in his mouth and hands one to her, she says, "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon... we have the stars."
They don't make like that anymore.