NOW, VOYAGER (1942)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama / Romance

Director: Irving Rapper

Cast: Bette Davis / Paul Henreid / Gladys Cooper

Plot

Following an emotional breakdown, spinster Charlotte Vale goes on a cruise and falls in love with an unhappily married businessman.  Transformed into a stylish and confident woman, she returns home to confront her domineering mother and pursue personal happiness, yet is unable to escape the memory of her past affair.

What I Liked

“Now, Voyager” would never be made today, at least not in anywhere near the form that it was made in 1942.  It represents the pinnacle of Hollywood melodrama, a genre of operatic histrionics that has long since fallen out of vogue with American film audiences.  As such, this movie is a sort of time capsule of public tastes, particularly among women, in the 1940s and 1950s.  In short, melodramas (sometimes called “women’s pictures”) were essentially the chick flicks of their day, and “Now, Voyager” is perhaps the most popular and highly regarded of them all.

For me, lead Bette Davis is the strength of the film.  True to the genre, the script is full of overemotional and over-romantic dialogue, threatening to make the film feel dreadfully dated.  Yet Davis handles her character with a subtlety and confidence that overcomes the limitations of her script by downplaying Charlotte’s emotions.  Davis gives her character as much depth through subtle gesture, posture, walk, and expression as possible, rather than through melodramatic clichés like swooning, moaning, and weeping.  Women, as embodied by Davis, are complex and intelligent, not simply love-sick crybabies.  It is Davis who transforms not only the character from wallflower to lady-about-town, but also he movie from mindless schlock into a rare (for the period) character study.

What I Didn’t Like

Despite Davis’ accomplished acting, there is never any doubt that “Now, Voyager” is the quintessential, almost definitive, melodrama, a style that is admittedly not among my favorites.  The strings-saturated soundtrack (which apparently won an Oscar?) doesn’t quit, just as the script has all of the central characters incessantly putting “Oh” in front of each other’s names.  It’s “Oh, Jerry” this and “Oh, mother” that for two hours on end.  Oh, stop.

I’m glad this kind of movie died out, though its legacy lives on through television in the form of the soap opera.

Most Memorable Scene

Apparently the closing scene of the film features the first time in motion pictures that a man put two cigarettes in his mouth to light both and hand one to his lover, a suggestive gesture that caused quite a stir among the female audiences of the day but has since become a cliché.  This is as good of a scene as any to pick for it’s being a definitive moment in romantic cinema, but also because no moment really struck me as exceedingly memorable.

My Rating: 3 out of 5