Bette Davis
All films with reviews
 | 1978 |
 | 1942 |
 | 1940 |
|
| 1931 |
|
| 1932 |
|
| 1937 |
Other films seen
1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1952 The Star
1950 All About Eve 1944 Mr Skeffington 1942 Now, Voyager 1940 The Letter 1939 The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex 1939 Dark Victory
1938 Jezebel
1936 Satan Met a Lady 1936 The Petrified ForestTop Tens
Favorite films
- All About Eve
- Now, Voyager
- All This & Heaven Too
- It's Love I'm After
- Dark Victory
- Dangerous
- Jezebel
- The Letter
- What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
- The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex
Quotations
(from The Lonely Life)
Competence has never been excellence to me. I wish today's critics would consider that. Doing a job well is to be expected. Adequacy has become today's high standard.
I am not a teacher. I only know that an actor feels. He galvanizes his energies and his faculties and then goes out of himself not in. He pretends to be this other human being. If he has insight, he intuits and projects himself into the character, never losing the lifeline, the umbilical cord, without which he is a raving maniac and even worse — an amateur. He must always know he is pretending. Some part of him retains this knowledge; but he must suffer as the character just as he must move like him and speak like him.
An actor without insight is a mannequin; and there isn't a school in the world that can give it to him. The real actor — like any real artist — has a direct line to the collective heart. This isn't pretension. This is the whole thing in a nutshell.
Many of the girls and boys today come over quite genuinely and charmingly as themselves, which is an accomplishment of some sort.But take them out of their environment and they are lost. The classics are impossible for them. Any change of locale or time throws them. They have simply learned to express themselves; and I'm terribly happy for them. When they learn to express the character, I shall applaud them.
Then there's the question of style. Without it, there is no art. As personal as these troubled actors are, there is — aside from much of a muchness — the same of a sameness. They are all so busy revealing their own insides that, like all X-ray plates, one looks pretty much like the other. Their godhead, the remarkably gifted Marlon Brando, may bring (as all true stars do) his own personal magnetism to every part, but his scope and projection are unarguable. He has always transcended the techniques he was taught. His consequent glamour and style have nothing to do with self-involvement but rather radiation.
The purists have much to say about personal magnetism, style and star quality. I will defend all three to my death. This is not a contradiction, either. The actor must learn to play a variety of melodies on his instrument. It is hardly tragic if the audience comes to recognize the tone of his Stradivarius. One can be just so lofty and arty about the "theatuh." The public makes its stars and loves them. They should recognize them and welcome them. It doesn't take one whit away from an honest portrayal.
Any actor of stature and power, despite the borrowed gestures of a legitimate characterization, should command the recognition the public enjoys. I've never known one who did not.
There is no luxury like the fatigue that follows a labor of love. Nothing in the whole, wide world as soul-satisfying as a job well done. Accomplishment. Few go all out. Few will gamble. Everybody wants security. A good percentage of our lives is spent doing things we loathe. Marvelous! It puts starch in your spine. Who looks forward to brushing his teeth, painting the shed or changing the linens? We're making our beds all right. We are face to face and up against an astringent, dedicated society which has been toughened by sacrifice and unhappy regimentation.
