All About Eve (1950), Now, Voyager (1942), Mr. Skeffington (1944), The Petrified Forest (1936), The Letter (1940), Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), Dark Victory (1939), Jezebel (1938) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Bette Davis movies.
Storyline: Well-to-do Joyce Ramsey is the dominant and domineering force in her household comprised of her lawyer husband David Ramsey, their young adult daughter Diana Ramsey and their late teenaged daughter Martha Ramsey. Everything Joyce has done in the course of her marriage to David has been in the pursuit of wealth, prestige, comfort and security for her and the family, which belies her and David's humble beginnings. Their current wealth and status began with a white lie told by Joyce to one of David's potential clients when David was still struggling as a lawyer, that lie which had the consequence of Joyce, and by association David, stepping on the back of a friend as they climbed the social ladder, Joyce never to look back after this and subsequent such actions. Joyce has no real idea of how her actions have negatively affected David's feelings for her, Joyce who is blindsided when David asks her for a divorce in no longer loving her. As such, Joyce has no idea why David wants the divorce. Although Joyce's friends put into her mind that another woman may be involved which does make Joyce curious if that is the sole reason for David's want, Joyce begins to reflect on key points in the course of her and David's marriage. Those reflections, Joyce's investigation into David's possible infidelity, she getting a glimpse of her future without David and his love, and she getting a sense of that young, pure love again that she and David truly had when they wed may affect what Joyce decides to do about David's request for the divorce.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: drama, film noir, family, marriage, divorce, legal, courtroom ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Abandoning artistic ambitions, sensitive and club-footed Philip Carey enrolls in medical school and falls in love with a waitress Mildred Rogers. She rejects him, runs off with a salesman and returns unmarried and pregnant. Philip gets her an apartment and they become engaged. Mildred runs off with another medical student. Philip takes her back again when she returns with her baby. She wrecks his apartment and burns the securities he needs to pay tuition. He gets a job as a salesman, has surgery on his foot, receives an inheritance, and returns to school where he learns Mildred is dying.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: classic film, black and white, drama, romance, literary adaptation, 1930s, golden age of hollywood ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Montgomery Royle is a famed pianist whose student, the much younger Grace Blair, believes herself to be in love with him. When an explosion destroys Royle's hearing, he is bitter at the loss of his art and profession. His sister Florence persuades him to learn lip-reading as a way to break out of the isolation of deafness. Royle discovers a new meaning to his life when he uses his new lip-reading knowledge to help others. But the new skill has serious ramifications for his relationship with Grace.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, music, pianist, sacrifice, redemption, loneliness ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Foreign correspondent Carey Jackson is offered a job on Home Life, a "women's" magazine; he accepts when he finds the editor is his old flame Linda Gilman. Verbal pyrotechnics fly between Carey and Linda as they go to Indiana to cover the Brinker family's "typical American wedding." But triangles lurk beneath the surface of the impending nuptials. Can Carey rescue a story (and his job) out of the wreckage? Can all the sundered hearts be re-united?—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: romantic comedy, classic hollywood, career woman, lighthearted humor, adapted screenplay, urban setting, emotional entanglement ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Unscrupulous investigator of lost heirs Jimmy Corrigan loses his love Joan Martin to apparently upright competitor James Wallingham. He counters by adding a veneer of respectability to his own operation. Meanwhile he exposes Wallingham for a fraud.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: comedy, crime, gangster, 1930s, warner bros, classic hollywood, fast-paced ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Mary Donnell was married at sixteen to a gangster and soon widowed. She works for unhappily married lawyer Lloyd Rogers. A client's son Jack elopes with her, but his father tracks them down and has the marriage annulled. Mary has a son. Unaware of this, the father remarries; his new wife is crippled in an auto accident. The lawyer, now dying, tells Mary he has left her money for her and her son, Rogers' widow suspects her husband may have been the father. Jack's ruthless father , upon learning that he is the grandparent of the child, threatens legal action to gain custody, but his son wants no part in separating little Jackie from his mother. Further, he reasserts his love for Mary and promises he will ask his now handicapped wife, Flip, for a divorce so that Jackie will have a real family. He instructs Mary to pack her belongings and get Jackie ready to leave so that the three can start a new life together. Before Jack has a chance to inform his now-handicapped wife, Flip, of these stunning developments, Flip pays an unexpected visit to Mary's apartment. To Mary's surprise, Flip makes a heartfelt, selfless plea for her to take Jack and make him happy as (in her words) she could no longer do. Mary is so struck by the offer and by Flip's true love for Jack, that she not only decides to cancel her plans to reunite with Jack, but also to ask Jack to adopt Jackie and, along with Flip, give him a 'proper' life in society. Jack enters the apartment and, in a whispered chat with Mary, is prevented from telling Flip that he ever had any intention of leaving her.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, classic, black and white, hollywood, 1930s, female lead ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A small-town librarian is branded as a Communist by local politicians when she refuses to withdraw a controversial book from the library's shelves.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: political persecution, cold war, american history, 1950s, education, small town life, social pressure ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Commercial artist Helen Bauer believes marriage kills romance. She lives with advertising writer Don Peterson. He convinces her to marry him. He later carries on with client Peggy Smith; Helen takes up with Don's competitor Nick Malvyn. In the end, the couple agree to give marriage another chance.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, comedy, 1930s, black-and-white, warner bros, remarriage ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Two architects lose their heads over a glamorous actress.
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, comedy, classic, hollywood, black and white, 1930s ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Sardonic detective Shane, thrown out of one town for bringing trouble, heads for home and his ex-partner's detective agency. The business is in a sad way, and Shane, who has had the forethought to provide himself with a 250-dollar commission from an old lady on the train, is welcomed with open arms. When pretty Valerie Purvis walks in the next day willing to pay over the odds to put a tail on the man who did her wrong, Shane's way with the ladies looks like paying off yet again. But things start to go wrong when his partner is murdered, and Shane himself comes home to find his apartment wrecked by a gentlemanly crook who comes back to apologise -- and to tell him a fascinating fairy-story about the fabled Horn of Roland that looks like not being so mythical after all. Miss Purvis wants protection. The police want answers. And all sorts of people want the 'French horn'... but Shane is one jump ahead of everyone all the way. Well, almost.—Igenlode Wordsmith
Plot Keywords: mystery, crime, film noir, detective, comedy, satire, adaptation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A mother/daughter pair of witches descend on a yuppie family's home and cause havoc, one at a time since they share one body, and the other must live in a cat the rest of the time. Now it's up to the family's mother, a private detective and a suspended police officer to try and stop the witches.—edited by Rob
Plot Keywords: comedy, fantasy, family, horror, black comedy, magic, supernatural ...
Movie Details Click Here !