Even by Bette Davis's standards, this must rank as one of her most over-the-top martyrdoms in movies. Not only does she forgive her long-standing fiancé, part-time pilot George Brent, his drunken one-night stand with glamour-puss Mary Astor, but she then takes him back after he tries to marry her rival (failing only on a technicality) and indeed even when she learns he has impregnated the bold Mary too.
But there's yet more, after Brent disappears somewhere along the Amazon on official government business, without him knowing he's a dad-to-be, moneybags Bette makes a pact with Astor to encourage her to go ahead with the birth and then give the child over to her to bring up as her own allowing Astor to continue with her career as a world-class concert pianist, even whisking her away to a secret hideaway and calling in a local doctor so that the baby is born in the utmost privacy. No, don't ask me why Astir is a globe-trotting musician, although it does give an excuse for the soundtrack to reverberate with the piano music of Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Rubinstein.
Well, you can guess what happens next, as Brent miraculously turns up alive and walks back into both woman's lives triggering an almighty tug-of-love to be resolved in the final reel.
You firstly feel you have to credit the players just for keeping their faces straight while acting out this preposterous storyline and then salute them for keeping you watching until the end. Davis is in her element, again making with the grand gesture beholden to Brent and under the direction of Edmund Goulding. Chain-smoking and trouser-wearing, she laps up part, especially when she gets to slap the hussy Astor when the latter is having a serious bout of pre-natal depression. Astor won an Oscar for playing the avaricious other woman and Brent is his usual urbane self even if you can't quite imagine him stringing along two such different women.
Anyway, for all its preposterousness, Davis and Astor's two-hander, with the wonderful Hattie MacDaniels chipping in with another of her typecast subservient mammy roles, make it worth watching.
But there's yet more, after Brent disappears somewhere along the Amazon on official government business, without him knowing he's a dad-to-be, moneybags Bette makes a pact with Astor to encourage her to go ahead with the birth and then give the child over to her to bring up as her own allowing Astor to continue with her career as a world-class concert pianist, even whisking her away to a secret hideaway and calling in a local doctor so that the baby is born in the utmost privacy. No, don't ask me why Astir is a globe-trotting musician, although it does give an excuse for the soundtrack to reverberate with the piano music of Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Rubinstein.
Well, you can guess what happens next, as Brent miraculously turns up alive and walks back into both woman's lives triggering an almighty tug-of-love to be resolved in the final reel.
You firstly feel you have to credit the players just for keeping their faces straight while acting out this preposterous storyline and then salute them for keeping you watching until the end. Davis is in her element, again making with the grand gesture beholden to Brent and under the direction of Edmund Goulding. Chain-smoking and trouser-wearing, she laps up part, especially when she gets to slap the hussy Astor when the latter is having a serious bout of pre-natal depression. Astor won an Oscar for playing the avaricious other woman and Brent is his usual urbane self even if you can't quite imagine him stringing along two such different women.
Anyway, for all its preposterousness, Davis and Astor's two-hander, with the wonderful Hattie MacDaniels chipping in with another of her typecast subservient mammy roles, make it worth watching.