"I hope you die.... I hope you die soon... I'll be waiting for you to die...." La Davis could have been invented to deliver Hellmans vicious lines as they pour forth venomously from her over-made up face. However, upon close scrutiny of Lillan Hellman's original stage-play Regina has a stage direction to "smile" as she delivers these lines to her husband Horace. And, later on, in the movie, big brother Ben (Charles Dingle) reminds Regina (Bette Davis) to smile as "mama always said a good looking woman should never frown". And this smile, coupled with Reginas evil chuckle throughout the movie makes me wonder just why the Davis Diva didn't deliver the 'money moment' accompanied by this deliciously evil smile. Wyler and Davis' fights over the interpretation of the character of Regina Giddens are legendary, and indeed the reason they never worked together again. Could this be a result of one such spate? And if so, just who won out? But I'm being pedantic. I'm also digressing and off on a tangent, which I shall come back from now. Lillian Hellman and her writings have come under much scrutiny, and too often for her outspoken political comment and left-of-centre lifestyle. But two academic comparisons of her dramatic (and subsequent film) scripts that spring to mind are those of parallels to that master of morals and realism, Henrik Ibsen; another with Classic Greek Tragedy. Both Mr Ibsen and Mr Aristophanes were concerned with the greater common good and of mans inhumanity to man. And Hellman does not let us down on this one. Davis and cast deliver one of the most spectacular ensemble performances in cinematic history with a tale of avarice and greed that can apply to any of the so called "Globalized" corporations of today. Davis and her colleagues can be seen as early prophets of todays greed and selfishness in society, and we could easily lose the period costumes and transpose this story into modern times. Hellman could easily have been predicting the horrors and terrors of the current global drug companies and their willingness to let millions of Africans die of AIDS due to lack of much needed medicines....just as Regina Giddens sits quietly by and watches her husband Horace die of a heart attack rather than climb the stairs to get his drugs for him. I wonder how much, if at all, Davis, Wyler and Hellman knew that this masterpiece was to represent a portent of the global doom of corporate greed that our world has become today? CGJOB 30th August 2006
Review of The Little Foxes
