Mr. Skeffington (1944)

Only my second Vincent Sherman film, I am quite impressed with the directors ability and sense of social consciences, no wonder he was later blacklisted. Essentially the story of a doomed marriage, the film features Bette Davis as Fanny Trellis, a pretty but flawed young thing from an established but now broke New York family, and Claude Rains as Job Skeffington, her self-made, older Jewish husband. Set across a scope of years starting in 1914 and ending around 1940, anti-Semitism is a subject of obvious relevance to the characters in the story, but not something typically handled in films of the period (even the then groundbreaking semi-exploration of the subject in Gentleman’s Agreement now seems largely tepid). To me the key scene in the film is the dinner the recently divorced Mr. Skeffington has with his 10 year old daughter just before departing for a business venture in Europe (this scene would be set in the mid-1920's). The daughter, who is much more comfortable with her father then with her well meaning but often flighty mother, is desperate to go with him to Germany, but he fears that taking her with him will expose her to the evils of anti-Semitism so prevalent in Europe at the time. The way Rains so tenderly tries to explain this concept, one practically undecipherable to a little girl is heart breaking, the honesty of that scene speaks volumes. Davis is also quite excellent as Fanny, she has nice arc, though it becomes a little heavy handed in the denouncement. The dialog in the film is memorably strong and often witty, especially in the drawing- room- farce heavy first half. Really an excellent film that deserves to be better known, a 5 out of 5 in its first 2 hours it drops a bit in its last half hour, but I feel the overall impression and enjoyablity of the film make it deserve the full 5 out of 5 rather then 4 1/2.