Now, Voyager (1942)

Directed by Irving Rapper. Starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Gladys Cooper, Claude Rains, John Loder, Janis Wilson, Bonita Granville, Ilka Chase, Lee Patrick.

Resting amongst the glorious virtue of the woman’s picture, yet just as vulnerable to the lachrymose sting of empowerment gutted for tragedy—if not now, voyager, then when, voyager? Psychiatrist Rains opens up the clogged emotional and sexual airways of repressed frump Davis; she goes on to find difficult love with married Henreid and stands up to her tyrannical harridan of a mother (Cooper, deliciously cruel). The kitsch ripens as the story progresses, and despite Rapper’s plodding treatment of the voluptuous emotional peaks (engendered by Casey Robinson’s adaptation of the Olive Higgins Prouty novel), the feature never becomes too restless in waiting for the next affront or meaningful glare. It’s a stretch to describe Davis’ work as skillful, but it still commands the screen—true, it’s easy to dominate Henreid, but even the dexterous Rains provides her the right of way every time. Even if the dialogue sounded like squawking blue jays, Max Steiner’s meddling music makes it clear how everyone watching should feel (notice its reuse in Mildred Pierce, its transformation into a standard with lyrics first performed by Allen Miller and His Orchestra, and how closely it resembles the melodramatic themes that Elmer Bernstein would one day write for Airplane!).

69/100