Search - The Great Lie on DVD

The White Goddess

Kevin Killian | San Francisco, CA United States | 03/16/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"At her country home, Maggie Van Allen (Bette Davis) is waited on hand and foot by Jefferson and Violet, two kindly black servants who do for her. Watching the movie, one becomes gradually aware of how vast Maggie's farm is: it's so big that she claims there are whole rooms she's never seen. In one scene she pulls a bellcord and it falls down from the ceiling, and she laughs. since this proves that it hasn't been used in a long, long time. During a wedding scene you see Violet and Jefferson approach a large iced cake and carefully it outside into a whole from yard filled with jubilant black well-wishers, singing and harmonizing in gospel cadences. Do they all work for Maggie? There must be thirty or forty of them. Maybe they're neighbors drawn to Maggie's farm for the festivities. "Nice music," speculates George Brent. "Yes," murmurs Bette Davis. Later it's revealed that Maggie's farm is twenty acres, but it seems enormous like San Simeon. It's big enough for George Brent to use a side field as a runway for his plane. I wonder what the point is to this slow buildup of Bette Davis as perhaps the richest woman in Maryland. At first it seems she lives humbly, so we feel she's the underdog in her personal war against Mary Astor, who lives the wild, Lindsay Lohan playgirl lifestyle in a giant hotel suite in Manhattan. It comes as a thunderbolt when Davis makes Astor an offer she can't financially refuse--until that moment, you'd never guess that Astor was suffering for money!

The only way you might possibly guess is that Davis' exquisite clothes are a considerable notch above Mary Astor's. Astor favors tight, tight, playgirl jumpsuits flecked with bugle beads and glitter, like an Easter basket. For her big scene at the end, she wears what looks like a Mao jacket and pants from the early 1970s. She doesn't look awful, it's just that her wardrobe looks like it cost about 50 cents. Well, there's one beautiful gown she wears for her Philadelphia piano recital. She's got a meaty, meaty role here and she does everything she can with it, considering she's often missing from the action the script dictates. The script is pretty shallow, but it's a rare movie that concentrates on the rivalry, then the alliance, between two strong women, and their scenes together are grand. Davis must have been tiny--I never realized that until watching The Great Lie. Next to George Brent (who tells her, "You've shrunk") or buried in Hattie McDaniel's arms, she's like a Bette Davis doll of herself.
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