Rating: 
Summary: Davis in her element
Review: NOW VOYAGER is one of Bette Davis' greatest screen vehicles. It's a tender love story, taut psychological drama and inspiring tale of physical and spiritual transformation. It runs neck-and-neck with DARK VICTORY as Davis' greatest performance.Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a lonely and repressed spinster living with her cold and domineering mother (Gladys Cooper). Her kind sister-in-law (Ilka Chase), fearing that Charlotte is headed for a complete breakdown, sees no other option than to bring Dr Jaquith (Claude Rains) to the house to inspect the situation. Jaquith takes Charlotte back to his secluded estate Cascades where she recovers. When Charlotte travels abroad after her discharge, she meets the handsome but very-much married Jerry (Paul Henreid) and embarks on an affair. Charlotte then returns home alone, but soon finds herself back in Jerry's life when his troubled daughter Tina ends up at Cascades during Charlotte's relapse. Charlotte helps Tina recover and regain her life, and in turn, Tina helps Charlotte rediscover her romance with Jerry. The DVD includes music scoring sessions and the trailer.
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Summary: Bravo to Bette!
Review: Now Voyager is one of those magical movies that can be watched repeatedly (like Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory) and each viewing uncovers new layers of magic. Bette's portrayal of Charlotte Vale goes the gamut from repressed old maid to striking woman of the world. But I loved, too, besides the top-notch acting, studying the Orry-Kelly fashions for his star, which are timeless, the unforgettable musical score of Max Steiner, which makes this movie throb from the first frame to the last with a powerful resonance. Movies like this one makes one long for the days when studios made great films for everyone--unlike today where every movie is aimed for "teens" or the pimple-faced set. Bette should have won an Oscar that year--as she should have for Dark Victory, In This Our Life, Beyond the Forest, etc.
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Summary: Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a coming out party
Review: Over all this reminded me of a one liner in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) ASIN: 079283755X" where Hero says," For us there will never be happiness." Philia replies," We must learn to be happy without it." This is not as dark as "Dark Victory (1939) ASIN: B00004TX25." But it is just as intense. And there is no way that you will get me to mention ""Don't ask for the moon--we have the stars" in this review. What makes the movie so intriguing, is that you can recognize the characters in real life. I think one of the shockers for me was when Charlotte Vale was forced to remove her eye glasses to find she did not need them. I tried it my self and could not see a thing. Of course by this time most viewers have their glasses off by this time and tissues on their eyes. See Paul Henreid just as intense as Henry in "Between Two Worlds (1944)"
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Summary: Bette at her best!
Review: So much of this movie has become standard camp for Bette Davis fans that, upon first viewing, it may in fact be hard to detach yourself from the recognizable theme music...the cigarette puffing...the mannerisms and Bette's strut (forget "Bette Davis Eyes," that broad could WALK!!). And, of course, those famous lines!
However, NOW VOYAGER is a dramatically different "woman's picture of the 1940s." It is more risque, more senitively acted (especially with its dynamite supporting cast)and carefully written. It rises above soap opera melodrama and delivers a powerful message about choices we make...especially impressive when the messenger IS a woman of the 1940s.
You will only enjoy it more when you see it AGAIN!
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Summary: Atmospheric Soapy-Suds!
Review: Solid-gold Bette! One of my favorite movies. Davis and Henreid make the perfect 40s couple; his lighting of two cigarettes and handing one to her was shocking for the time and still erotic today. Claude Rains as the understanding therapist makes the perfect accompaniment to their romance. Movies like this just aren't made anymore. Today this would star Julia Roberts and Kevin Costner and end in a happy mush. A true woman like Bette Davis knows what it's like to love and sacrifice. A fitting summming up of this cinema classic is Davis' final line, "Oh, Jerry. Don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars!"
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Summary: May Be Bette's Best
Review: Some movies simply get better with age, much like fine red wine. This is certainly true of "Now Voyager." It is an "ugly duckling" to "beautiful swan" tale--hardly a cutting edge concept--but it works impressively here. Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) seems doomed to a life of dull spinsterhood under the thumb of her domineering mother, the outstanding Gladys Cooper. But a kindly psychiatrist comes along (Claude Rains) who sees potential worth tapping under nervous Charlotte's dumpy exterior. And the transformation is filmed superbly;Bette Davis never looked more glamorous. The first shot of the "new" Charlotte--now traveling under an assumed name on a cruise ship--as she makes her entrance is a moment of monumental film making. Aboard the cruise, Charlotte meets and falls in love with a married man (Paul Henried), and she manages to stay connected to him through his troubled daughter that she finds and helps at Cascade, the very institution that helped bring forth the new Charlotte Vale. There are moments of joy, moments of humor, moments of sadness in this movie. Max Steiner's score is top notch, and Orry-Kelly's costumes could not be better. This film has frequently been singled out as perhaps the best representation of the trends in moviemaking in the 1940's. After viewing it, you will understand why.
Rating:
Summary: May Be Bette's Best
Review: Some movies simply get better with age, much like fine red wine. This is certainly true of "Now Voyager." It is an "ugly duckling" to "beautiful swan" tale--hardly a cutting edge concept--but it works impressively here. Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) seems doomed to a life of dull spinsterhood under the thumb of her domineering mother, the outstanding Gladys Cooper. But a kindly psychiatrist comes along (Claude Rains) who sees potential worth tapping under nervous Charlotte's dumpy exterior. And the transformation is filmed superbly;Bette Davis never looked more glamorous. The first shot of the "new" Charlotte--now traveling under an assumed name on a cruise ship--as she makes her entrance is a moment of monumental film making. Aboard the cruise, Charlotte meets and falls in love with a married man (Paul Henried), and she manages to stay connected to him through his troubled daughter that she finds and helps at Cascade, the very institution that helped bring forth the new Charlotte Vale. There are moments of joy, moments of humor, moments of sadness in this movie. Max Steiner's score is top notch, and Orry-Kelly's costumes could not be better. This film has frequently been singled out as perhaps the best representation of the trends in moviemaking in the 1940's. After viewing it, you will understand why.
Rating:
Summary: The most unique movie
Review: Starring Bette Davis, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains, "Now, Voyager" was for me a strangely liberating experience. In its time the movie was known as a "weepie," or a "woman's movie." Such has our culture changed, however, that seeing it for the first time now made me, perhaps, see it differently from the way men might have seen it in 1942. I found myself actively disliking all the men in the movie (and Bette's mother, who is much more like a tyrannical father than a mother) and identifying instead with Bette Davis. The men in the movie want to take over the woman's voice. They want to speak her innermost thoughts for her, not understanding how radically wrong they might be. Paul Henreid, who is magnificent in a role that men in the 1940s and 1950s must have thought was one of an infinitely patient and suffering but noble husband (of another woman in the movie, not Bette), is on current viewing the most extreme kind of villain just because he's so damn smooth. With sincere "nobility" at the end he says to Bette that she should be free to marry "some man who will make you happy." Self-sacrifice on his part? No, he thinks SHE is the one who will be undergoing self-sacrifice if she doesn't get married! He says to her, when it is clear that he has made up his mind to go back to his wife and Bette will probably remain a spinster and bring up his daughter, "No self-respecting man would allow such self-sacrifice as yours to go on indefinitely." And I'm sure that male viewers in past decades would think, "yes, his greatest concern is indeed for her." But Bette isn't buying. In the movie she responds, "That is the most conventional, pretentious, pious speech I ever heard in my life. I simply don't know you."
I understand why this unique film has been called one of the greatest, and most unexpected, movies ever to come out of Hollywood. Professor Cavell writes of the films he discusses in his book "Contesting Tears": "There is surely a sense of sacrifice in this group of films; they solicit our tears. But is it that the women in them are sacrificing themselves to the sad necessities of a world they are forced to accept? Or isn't it rather that the women are claiming the right to judge a world as second-rate that enforces this sacrifice; to refuse, transcend, its proposal of second-rate sadness?"
Rating:
Summary: Betty Davis at her Best
Review: Talk about a tear-jerker, boy this is it! Betty Davis is the walked over, taunted and controlled ugly duckling who comes into her own and turns into the most amazing swan!
And there's a love story times two, as Davis helps a young girl, much like herself when she was young and the father of that girl, but their love must remain a secret. Oooo, you've just got to see this one! But have a box of tissue handy!
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Summary: Shopping Can Really Cheer A Girl Up
Review: The joys of retail therapy are taken to exhilarating heights in this beautifully crafted melodrama. This is such tremendous trash! It has it all: secret lovers that can never consummate their desire, freudian mother-blaming psychoanalysis, and a woman who has had the make-over of a life-time (those eyebrows really needed work!). From a sad spinster to a heroic heiress, Bette Davis is at her teary-eyed best. This absolutely stunning weepie proves that blowing smoking in someone's face can mean so much more that "f*** off".
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