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Jezebel

Jezebel

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $15.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Bette Davis Fan, you must OWN it!
Review: This is Bette Davis at her best. If you are a fan of her's you must own it. Fonda and Davis give us a first rate performance, not to be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A great Movie
Review: This is one of my all time favorite movies. Fonda and Davis are wonderful. Bette Davis as the spoiled Julie, is perfect for the role.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Is this role so suitable for Bette Davis caractere?
Review: This movie is extremely agreeable and has some of the big lines of "gone with the wind". Bette plays as always remarquably, but I like her best in her movies of the forties! I think she should have gotten the award in other movies such as Dark Victory or "bon Voyager" instead of this one!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: an inspiring performance by davis
Review: This movie ranks in all lists it involves as a masterpiece. Winning Davis her second oscar is is undoubtedly at her best in all categories, seductive (the scene in the garden with henry fonda) bitchy (the meal where Fondas wife is present) and above all inspiring to the unwary first timer. This movie sweeps through pre cival war america, as it includes several conversations where the @men folk@ talk about the @North@. most notabily highlighted as Preston dillons wife, amy who he marries having breaking his engagment to Julie (Davis) is a "northerner" I recommend this movie for any movie lover, of any taste, suspence romance etc, as it entails both thrilling scenes romance and will have you gasping at the consequences, this is one not to be missed

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good movie, not as dramatic or long as Gone With The Wind.
Review: This movie starts out similar to Gone With The Wind, but quickly moves in it's own direction. Bette Davis does a marvelous job without going for the Scarlet O'Hara angle. Henry Fonda's character is a nice mix between Rhett and Ashley. This is a good movie with a fast pace and a strong ending. Good for when your in the mood for a Civil War drama, but don't have the time or patience to sit through Gone With The Wind.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Southern Style
Review: This was the first teaming of Bette Davis with director William Wyler, and it's as classy as you would expect from Wyler, with the fireworks you would expect from Davis. Davis stars as a spoiled southern belle who goes after everything she wants and expects to get it. However, her selfishness has an effect on those around her. Needless to say, Davis is terrific in the central role, making her both both sympathetic, yet willful and stubborn. She is well supported by the cast, especially Fay Bainter as her patient aunt, who understatedly demonstrates the way a "true" southern woman should behave. The scene at the ball is justifiably famous, highlighted by Wyler's terrific direction and camerawork. Fans of Davis and Wyler will enjoy this film.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Southern Drama
Review: Until Gone With The Wind was produced one year later, this film was the premiere motion picture on the antebellum South. Strong-headed and willful, Julie Martin (Davis) wears a red dress to the Olympus Ball (virginal white is what unmarried girls are supposed to wear), scandalizes New Orleans society and loses her engagement to Preston Dillard (Fonda). The next time she sees him, she is in white and on her knees apologizing. Excellent movie, with real-life historical events thrown in, and a dramatic climax and conclusion. Too bad it could not be in color. Imagine, a movie about a red dress filmed in black and white. For crying out loud, give me a break.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A WOMAN CALLED JEZEBEL...
Review: Warner Bros. supposedly made this film to beat MGM's "Gone With The Wind" to the box office. "Jezebel" doesn't hold a candle to GWTW but it stands firm on it's own merit---that being the fine treatment given to the story based on the old play and the performance of Bette Davis as Julie (i.e Jezebel). Whether she deserved the Oscar or not is another matter but she makes the other cast seem like cardboard cut-outs. Julie is a spoiled headstrong antebellum vixen who drives men to distraction and/or duels to the death in this case. She shames herself and her family with her extremes until she must repent by heroic means. Not a weeper as some may think, but a Southern drenched tale of irony set around the time of the Civil War. Davis is pretty here and beautifully costumed. She flounces around with hoop skirts a-whirling and eyes a-flashing and her accent is properly proper. A young Henry Fonda and a stalwart George Brent round out the suitors who duel for Julie ending in tragedy. I find this film a matter of taste but I still give it 5 stars. It's a genuine classic.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A bad movie
Review: When I heard of this movie I couln't wait to see it. ...altogether I was disapointed with this film. The movie starts out okey with a plot that could be good and it starts to get better as the film goes on but then all of a sudden at the end it just stops theres no actual closer to the plot. I thought if this movie was an hour longer I could have at leasthave called it a good film. To top it all of It had some pretty bad performances. Everyone was talking about how great Bette Davis was in this movie and how she would have made the perfect scarlett in GWTW so I was really excited to see her but she totally overacted the part and it was actually hard not to laugh out loud at her during some parts of this film and I was shocked when I heard she won best actress. The movie is also in black and white and that makes it boring and dull but I think if was in color that would only show how fake and tacky the sets look. The DVD offers no special features besides one trailer and it dosen't look like they did a very good job fixing the film from its original version. ... This movie is a waste of your time and money don't buy this!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sometimes, Men Aren't Interested in a Woman in Red
Review: Yes, that's the lesson poor Julie (Bette Davis) has to learn in this antebellum South soaper. Because she is too impetuous for her own good, she decides to toy with fiance Pres (Henry Fonda) by wearing a vampish red dress to New Orleans' Olympus Ball, where unmarried gals such as herself are supposed to wear white. But her ploy backfires when she becomes uneasy at the dance; however, his own strong temper makes him make her waltz with him, even though all the other dancers desert the floor. Then, he dumps her, sick of her game-playing. A year passes, and the duly abashed Julie gets news that Pres is finally back in town from his business concerns up North. Now she gladly will wear that white dress, but hey, who's this little miss he's brung from New York? Could it be...? Yep, you guessed it. Before we're done, there will be yellowjack epidemics, runnings through swamps, shocking duels, and a host of hoop skirts.

Well known for being Bette's consolation prize after losing out in the Scarlett stakes, "Jezebel" is a pretty good movie in its own right. Fay Bainter plays her exasperated aunt, trying to talk sense to her headstrong niece; Donald Crisp is the doctor whose warnings of an impending yellowjack epidemic prove true; George Brent is surprisingly good as a Southerner gent who fights more than one duel over Bette, whom he's sweet on. This is an especially interesting performance, because in movies like "42 Street", you can hear Brent's own native Irish brogue just in check, so his lazy drawl is pretty good here.

The cast is a rather large one, as Bette is forever giving or attending a soiree, and for that reason Henry Fonda gets a little short shrift--his character needs to be more defined than what we see here; he's good, but a little too sketchy for such an integral character. Margaret Lindsay plays his Northern wife Amy; a thankless sort of role, though she is pretty, but obviously toned down some so as not to compete with Bette in her own movie.

The treatment of slavery is interesting in the movie in the respects where it differs from the more famous, "Gone with the Wind". Julie is a more liberal mistress than Scarlett, promising that darned red dress to her body slave and permitting a male slave to continue to eat his dinner while she questions him about how he made his way to the plantation through the swamps. Dinner guests talk quite freely about their hatred for abolitionists, which is not really depicted in GWTW. In GWTW, Ashley, for instance, makes a statement about how he was going to free his father's slaves once they became his own. That's the furthest thing from anyone's mind in "Jezebel"--no one's trying to sound whitewashed here. In general, the slave population seem more intelligent here than in the other movie, where only Hattie McDaniel is permitted that luxury. Two different studios, two different takes on the matter.

While nowhere near the budget of "Gone with the Wind", "Jezebel" still manages to create its own mood of a vanished civilization, a world where gentlewomen are sometimes hussies who are nonetheless treasured by some menfolk (though not all) who will fight a duel over them as easily as they'd sip a julep. Davis did manage to win her second Oscar for this movie; I'm not quite sure what the competition was. Arrange your own hoops around you, and settle down for an intriguing trip down south with "Jezebel".


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