Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

9/11

(Louisiana; 1927 and 1964)

Director Robert Aldrich had intended this film as follow up to his earlier camp classic ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ Audiences had responded enthusiastically to that film, which featured the famed feuding ‘Queens’ of the old studio system, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, as faded stars locked in a life and death struggle. Where ‘Jane’ had featured Davis torturing Crawford, ‘Charlotte’ was to have reversed the roles and have Crawford torturing Davis. However the stars behind the scenes feud. became so intense that Crawford walked out of the picture after a few weeks of shooting, and Olivia deHavilland stepped in to take over her role, and delivered a fine performance in it to boot.

In short the story of ‘Charlotte’ concerns Charlotte (Davis) a daughter of Southern society who became notorious as the murder of the married man with whom she was having an affair (Bruce Dern). Her fathers connections kept her out of jail, but more then 35 years later she was living, mostly alone (save loyal made Agnes Moorehead) in the old family estate, a figure of local gossip and the imagination of young boys who want a scare. When the state decides to put a highway through her property, forcing her evacuation, Charlotte refuses, in part out of a deference to her late father, who wanted nothing more then to preserve the family homestead.

Into this tense situation comes deHavilland, a long estranged niece of the notorious Charlotte, who as her only living relative comes to help her move, and perhaps rekindle an old romance with a local doctor and former beau (Joseph Cotten). Of course this is how things seem at first, you feel you have the basic contours of the movie down, but trust me you don’t. Cecil Kellaway, in an unexpectedly scene stealing performance, has come from England to investigate the matter of the late Dern’s insurance policy having never been claimed, which holds the key, as it where, to the whole darned mystery.

This is great stuff, I thought it was only okay at first but by the end I was sold. It’s high melodrama as exploitation flick starting golden era Hollywood players. Yet I don’t feel they were taken advantage of here, no not at all, they gave strong performances and where kept relevant in the eyes of then contemporary audiences through work such as this, which never reached the level of self mockery that marked some of Vincent Prices later work. Thusly ‘Sweet Charlotte’ is a pretty sweet picture.