Review: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Somewhat unbalanced Charlotte Hollis (Bette Davis) lives alone in her family’s old mansion which is set for demolition. Stubbornly refusing to leave the estate, Charlotte enlists the aid of estranged cousin Miriam (Olivia De Havilland). However, Charlotte’s dark and violent past comes back to haunt her and an already troubled woman starts to go completely over the edge. Joseph Cotten plays long-time family friend Dr Drew Bayliss, Cecil Kellaway is a visiting newspaper journalist from England, and Agnes Moorehead plays Charlotte’s oddball but loyal housekeeper Velma. In a prologue, Victor Buono turns up as Charlotte’s overbearing father Big Sam Hollis.

 

The Southern Gothic cousin to “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, this 1964 film from Robert Aldrich (“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, “The Flight of the Phoenix”, “The Dirty Dozen”) is for me the far more enjoyable film. I felt a little bit of the former went a long way. The film gets off to a great, macabre start with a fine prologue featuring a perfectly cast Victor Buono and a shocking, severed limb that was probably fairly rare in mainstream cinema at the time and is still a bit shocking in 2022. It sets the stage for the lunacy to come, at any rate. Is it a horror film? I tend to think of it as a Southern Gothic melodrama, but there’s certainly elements of horror here and there.

 

At the centre of it all is a terrific, swing for the fences job by Bette Davis. The film isn’t subtle and neither is Davis’ performance, but there’s a lot more layers and depth to her work here than in “Baby Jane”, and that’s true of the film itself too. Davis’ Charlotte is such a tragic figure, but without stepping over the line into being pathetic. This poor woman has been mistreated, misjudged, and entirely misunderstood – ridiculed even – for such a long time. Beyond the melodrama and horror, there’s a tinge of sadness to the film that is very effective and affecting, and I think a lot of that goes to Davis. For me though, Olivia De Havilland is the key here. I really don’t think the film would work with the initial casting idea of Joan Crawford, it’d be too similar to “Baby Jane” and too obvious. The always underrated De Havilland is a more subtle, softer-voiced actress, so that when her character finally shows the ‘right side’ of her face, it really is quite startling for an actress best-known for playing the polar opposite in films like “The Heiress”, “Gone With the Wind”, etc. It really is an extraordinary performance. The supporting cast is truly top-notch, with Agnes Moorehead earning an Oscar nomination as Charlotte’s peculiar, Cajun-accented housekeeper, a fun performance with lots of great facial mugging and reaction shots. Joseph Cotten, one of my favourite actors, gets to show off his versatility within the same performance playing a character with multiple facets. He’s terrific, full of folksy Southern charm. In smaller roles we get familiar faces like Cecil Kellaway, Wesley Addy, a gum-chewing William Campbell, and a young-ish George Kennedy as a foreman frustrated by Charlotte’s refusal to vacate the premises. In a cameo we even get to see young John Megna from “To Kill a Mockingbird”, whilst flashbacks offer up a young Bruce Dern. The film has also been stunningly shot in B&W by Joseph Biroc (“Attack”, “Emperor of the North Pole”, “The Flight of the Phoenix”), with some particularly wonderful emphasis on overhead shots.

 

A wonderful blend of black comedy, horror, and Southern Gothic melodrama, this is an extremely underrated, well-directed and well-shot film. The entire cast is top-notch, but Bette Davis and Olivia De Havilland take top honours. The screenplay is by Henry Farrell (“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, the similar but lesser “What’s the Matter With Helen?”) and Lukas Heller (“The Dirty Dozen”, “The Flight of the Phoenix”), from a story by the former.

 

Rating: B+