The Little Foxes

Rating:
Summary: "Why Regina, how GREEDY you have become!"
Review: Bette Davis gives a brilliant portrayal of the selfish, grasping, heartless Regina. The scene where her husband is dying while she looks impassively ahead is absolutely chilling. This is a first-rate telling of the award winning stage play by Lillian Hellmann.

Rating:
Summary: GREED IN THE SOUTH OF 1900.
Review: Bette Davis gives a fascinating portrayal of the conniving self-centered Regina Giddons who desperately needs 75,000 dollars to invest in a business which will ultimately make her a wealthy woman. A masterpiece of film, this is an excellent example of a great play being transferred into a great film. Wyler's direction is meticulous as usual and Miss Davis gives a carefully crafted and inspired performance (one of her very best). Highly Recommended!

Rating:
Summary: ...Will Make You Sick!
Review: Bette Davis wants nothing more than to be rich and happy only problem is she is already wealthy and unhappy! Along with her tow cunning and vile brothers the plan is hatched to not only con each other but to con themselves into thinking they respect what they see in the mirror! Davis in her heavily powdered face, gothic clothes and sharp cutting eyes leave an impression on your brain for years! But the film is so telling of the human spirit. For not only does Davis want to be more rich - she has to stampede over her disabled husband (played to perfection by Herbert Marshall)to do so. But the road to redemption is always up for the taking but none of the characters even points their emotional compass in that direction. The brunch scene between Davis' husband, their long suffering daughter, aunt Birdie,along with the family made will make you sullen for their lack of nascent! The ultimate scene involves Bette Davis' infamous eyes, pills, her husband and a staircase not only does the camera stay on her frozen face but something lies deep uder her eyes is it redempion or sollar signs! Brilliant! The ultimate horror flick for adults!

Rating:
Summary: GRAND
Review: Bette Davis, what more can be said, a true classic, nasty, devious, cunning, she does it all with Davis style.

Rating:
Summary: Bette, Bette, Bette
Review: Bette, Bette, Bette, cold as ice and hard as nails in this Lillian Hellman story of the despicable Regina, grand matriarch of the oily Giddens clan. Set at the turn of the last century in the Old South of happy darkies and their benevolent white masters, an image redolent with the putrid smell of decaying fiction, Regina and her white trash relatives try to lure an investor into building a cotton mill near their land. With the Giddens family able to reap enormous rewards from such an arrangement, the greed becomes rampant as Regina and her two brothers scramble to try and raise their portion of the money. Hellman's story, with additional dialogue from Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, becomes incendiary. Regina is one of the most manipulative and domineering characters ever written. Through her Machiavellian machinations and twisting words and deeds, She is eventually victorious, of course -- ideally, this will bring solace to her, as she loses everything else - her family is gone, and she is, figuratively speaking, left being the biggest shark in a pool infested with them. Dazzling and chilling, and a monument of storytelling, filmmaking and acting.

Rating:
Summary: Bette's a B****!
Review: Can you picture a woman denying her husband the medicine that could save his life? Just sitting there staring at him, emotionless? Bette does just that in this movie. To horrible effect, I might add. This is an extremely powerful film, and the only bad thing about it is Bette's faked Southern accent (she was actually a Yankee.)

Rating:
Summary: Entirely worthy of serious movie buffs
Review: Here's another classic from the era when you had to know how to act to be in the movies, and dialogue was aimed at adults rather than dumbed down. The theme -- clash of values, family ties vs. avarice, just desserts -- is as old as time and we have all see it many times before. But strong and realistic character development, engaging drama, sophisticated plot and subplots, and effective period reenactment (South, circa 1900), gave it a new and compelling spin and made me want to follow it through closely to its conclusion. Pick this winner, reminiscent of Tennessee Williams' plays, when you want an evening of serious entertainment reflective of the quality that once built the industry now since fallen into gross mediocrity.

Rating:
Summary: A movie I can watch over and over again
Review: I don't know what to write in this review, since the other 3 reviews are absolutely accurate. Watch this film. I must find out what was the Best Picture, etc of 1941 since this film should have swept the Oscars in every category. It is timeless.

Rating:
Summary: William Wyler and Bette Davis: A Great Ride
Review: If there were ever a better movie made about family greed, duplicity and selfishness, I've yet to see it. William Wyler, one of the great directors, is at the top of his form. Bette Davis commands the screen with a performance so powerfully evil you can't stop watching, but it never descends to camp.

The Hubbard brothers, Ben (Charles Dingle) and Oscar (Carl Benton Reid), bankers in their turn-of-the-century southern town, have a scheme to bring cotton factories to the south where the cotton grows. With cheap labor they'll make a fortune. They need their sister, Regina Giddens (Bette Davis) to come up with a third of the required investment. The three believe they can get the money from Regina's sick husband, Horace (Herbert Marshall). He refuses, saying he won't be part of a scheme to take advantage of the workers in the town through the schemes of his wife and her brothers. "Maybe it's easy for the dying to be honest," he says to Regina. "I'm sick of you, sick of this house, sick of my unhappy life with you. I'm sick of your brothers and their dirty tricks to make a dime. There must be better ways of getting rich than building sweatshops and pounding the bones of the town to make dividends for you to spend. You'll wreck the town, you and your brothers. You'll wreck the country, you and your kind, if they let you. But not me, I'll die my own way, and I'll do it without making the world worse. I leave that to you." Regina's response is straightforward. "I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I'll be waiting for you to die." The brothers arrange to "borrow" some bearer bonds Horace is keeping in their bank. Horace discovers the theft. He plans to change his will, but dies before he can. Regina now says she wants a 75 per cent share of the scheme or she'll send her broithers to jail. Ben Hubbard simply chuckles and muses about why Regina's husband died on the stairs while she was in the living room. It's a stalemate of scorpions. But, as Ben said to Regina, "The world is open for people like you and me. We'll own it someday."

Most of this takes place in the Giddens' genteel antebellum mansion, yet Wyler has managed to avoid any hint of staginess (where the play, by Lillian Hellman, originated). He keeps things so dramatically edgy and moving that the story and the acting simply is engrossing.

Bette Davis, in my view, could and did go over the top too easily in portraying evil or ruthless women. Here she reins it in enough that her selfishness is stunning but you're reacting to the character, not just to Bette Davis acting. One of her great scenes is when, after her showdown with her husband in the parlor, Horace realizes he's having a heart attack and asks Regina to go up the stairs to his room and bring him his medicine. She just sits there, watching him. It dawns on him that she won't help him. He struggles to the stairs and partly climbs, partly crawls up. The camera focuses on Regina's face as, in the background, you can see him struggling...and dieing. It's quite a scene.

The other cast members are excellent. Charles Dingle, as Ben Hubbard, the brother who has the brains, is at once charming and completely unethical. Herbert Marshall, who often played noble but weak men, this time places the accent on physically weak but morally strong. Teresa Wright plays Alexandra Giddins, Regina and Horace's daughter who finally realizes the monster her mother is and breaks free of her. This was her first movie, and she holds her own very nicely with Davis.

In my view, this is one of the great American movies, and watchable many times. The DVD looks great.

Rating:
Summary: POSSIBLY DAVIS'S FINEST HOUR!
Review: In a magnificent showcase for her undeniable talent, Davis gives a fascinating portrayal of Regina Giddons, the selfish, greedy wife of weak-hearted (literally) Horace Giddons (Herbert Marshall). Many of the supporting players revised the roles they originated in the famed stage play which opened on Broadway in 1939 (Regina was brilliantly played by the legendary Tallulah Bankhead). Carl Benton Reid is great as Regina's conninving brother with whom she and Charles Dingle are in cahoots. Reid is most effective when he tells Davis "Since when do I take orders from YOU, Regina?". Dan Duryea is purposely unlikeable as Leo the crumb, while Teresa Wright, in her film debut, is suitably prim and naive (although she wisens up considerably towards the end) as Alexandra --Regina (her mother) remarks at one point: "why, Alexandra, I used to think you were all sugar-water!". I think Patricia Collinge's portrait of Birdie is perhaps the greatest feat of acting in the entire film; her playing is heart-breakingly sincere and she never strikes a false note as the unloved alcoholic flibbertigibbet who admits she doesn't like her own son, Leo. Director Wyler and star Davis fought bitterly over the correct interpretation of Regina; in retrospect, Bette gave a performance which made the critics sit up and stare: definitely one of her best and most underrated portrayals in a brilliant film career which spanned 50 years. This movie is still one the greatest examples of a great play being successfully transferred into a great film. Highly Recommended.