Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Little Foxes is playing on Mubi in the Us February 15 through March 15, 2016.William Wyler and Bette Davis had a good thing going by the time of The Little Foxes (1941). Wyler had three (of his eventually 12) Academy Award nominations and he had directed the star in two Oscar-worthy performances of her own: Jezebel (1938), for which she won, and The Letter (1940), for which she didn’t. Though it would grow increasingly contentious, their association was nonetheless mutually productive, and while Davis may have been reluctant to take on the role played to great acclaim by Tallulah Bankhead in Lillian Hellman’s stage version of The Little Foxes, the resulting feature film trumped the trepidation. Set in the indistinct though suitably decrepit “Deep South” circa 1900, the backdrop is just vague enough to be regionally collective but just specific enough to be wholly unique.
- 2/22/2016
- by Jeremy Carr
- MUBI
The Little Foxes (1941) Direction: William Wyler Screenplay: Lillian Hellman; from her play Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, Richard Carlson, Dan Duryea, Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid, John Marriott, Jessie Grayson, Russell Hicks Oscar Movies Highly Recommended Herbert Marshall, Bette Davis, The Little Foxes The Hands That Bilked America To not choose the revolutionary Citizen Kane as the Best Motion Picture of 1941 is to commit an unforgivable act of cinematic sacrilege. Courageously (or perhaps madly), I dare to choose another film: William Wyler's retelling of Lillian Hellman's scathing attack on American Family Values and Valuables, The Little Foxes. Originally staged on Broadway in 1939, The Little Foxes offers a deceptively simple plot line: in a Southern town at the turn of the 20th century, the aristocratic Regina Giddens, whose husband is a semi-invalid, concocts a scheme that should make her independently wealthy. Within that framework, Hellman...
- 2/23/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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