Cheap Jezebel (DVD) (Bette Davis, Henry Fonda) (William Wyler) Price

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Customer Reviews of Jezebel

Sometimes, Men Aren't Interested in a Woman in Red
Yes, that's the lesson poor Julie (Bette Davis) has to learn in this antebellum South soaper. Because she is too impetuous for her own good, she decides to toy with fiance Pres (Henry Fonda) by wearing a vampish red dress to New Orleans' Olympus Ball, where unmarried gals such as herself are supposed to wear white. But her ploy backfires when she becomes uneasy at the dance; however, his own strong temper makes him make her waltz with him, even though all the other dancers desert the floor. Then, he dumps her, sick of her game-playing. A year passes, and the duly abashed Julie gets news that Pres is finally back in town from his business concerns up North. Now she gladly will wear that white dress, but hey, who's this little miss he's brung from New York? Could it be...? Yep, you guessed it. Before we're done, there will be yellowjack epidemics, runnings through swamps, shocking duels, and a host of hoop skirts.

Well known for being Bette's consolation prize after losing out in the Scarlett stakes, "Jezebel" is a pretty good movie in its own right. Fay Bainter plays her exasperated aunt, trying to talk sense to her headstrong niece; Donald Crisp is the doctor whose warnings of an impending yellowjack epidemic prove true; George Brent is surprisingly good as a Southerner gent who fights more than one duel over Bette, whom he's sweet on. This is an especially interesting performance, because in movies like "42 Street", you can hear Brent's own native Irish brogue just in check, so his lazy drawl is pretty good here.

The cast is a rather large one, as Bette is forever giving or attending a soiree, and for that reason Henry Fonda gets a little short shrift--his character needs to be more defined than what we see here; he's good, but a little too sketchy for such an integral character. Margaret Lindsay plays his Northern wife Amy; a thankless sort of role, though she is pretty, but obviously toned down some so as not to compete with Bette in her own movie.

The treatment of slavery is interesting in the movie in the respects where it differs from the more famous, "Gone with the Wind". Julie is a more liberal mistress than Scarlett, promising that darned red dress to her body slave and permitting a male slave to continue to eat his dinner while she questions him about how he made his way to the plantation through the swamps. Dinner guests talk quite freely about their hatred for abolitionists, which is not really depicted in GWTW. In GWTW, Ashley, for instance, makes a statement about how he was going to free his father's slaves once they became his own. That's the furthest thing from anyone's mind in "Jezebel"--no one's trying to sound whitewashed here. In general, the slave population seem more intelligent here than in the other movie, where only Hattie McDaniel is permitted that luxury. Two different studios, two different takes on the matter.

While nowhere near the budget of "Gone with the Wind", "Jezebel" still manages to create its own mood of a vanished civilization, a world where gentlewomen are sometimes hussies who are nonetheless treasured by some menfolk (though not all) who will fight a duel over them as easily as they'd sip a julep. Davis did manage to win her second Oscar for this movie; I'm not quite sure what the competition was. Arrange your own hoops around you, and settle down for an intriguing trip down south with "Jezebel".

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A WOMAN CALLED JEZEBEL...
Warner Bros. supposedly made this film to beat MGM's "Gone With The Wind" to the box office. "Jezebel" doesn't hold a candle to GWTW but it stands firm on it's own merit---that being the fine treatment given to the story based on the old play and the performance of Bette Davis as Julie (i.e Jezebel). Whether she deserved the Oscar or not is another matter but she makes the other cast seem like cardboard cut-outs. Julie is a spoiled headstrong antebellum vixen who drives men to distraction and/or duels to the death in this case. She shames herself and her family with her extremes until she must repent by heroic means. Not a weeper as some may think, but a Southern drenched tale of irony set around the time of the Civil War. Davis is pretty here and beautifully costumed. She flounces around with hoop skirts a-whirling and eyes a-flashing and her accent is properly proper. A young Henry Fonda and a stalwart George Brent round out the suitors who duel for Julie ending in tragedy. I find this film a matter of taste but I still give it 5 stars. It's a genuine classic.

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Terrific performance, pointless and annoying story
The lead character is so very manipulative and knee-jerk reactionary that it's a wonder anyone fellow story charadctput up with her. Her love for her fiance played by a very wooden Henry Fonda seems non-existant, and when he leaves her after an impossible humiliating stunt of hers, she suddenly can't live without him. The story is drawing-room dull, all manners and behaviors. None of the characters are interesting enough to give a rat for. The dramatic ending is inconsequential and improbable.