16 October 2024
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
132 min.
Directed by Robert Aldrich.
With Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway, Mary Astor, Victor Buono, Bruce Dern, William Campbell, George Kennedy.
This is director Robert Aldrich's follow-up of sorts to his own What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

Bette Davis plays a woman who supposedly murdered her lover some years before and is now haunted by the episode. Is she losing her mind or is someone out to get her?

The incomparable Bette Davis is good as Charlotte (even if her persistent over the top yelling throughout tends to overwhelm the viewer and tire the senses).

De Havilland, who replaced Joan Crawford as Charlotte's cousin Miriam, is always classy and here is simply outstanding. Her outward sincerity masks an internal evil that is truly chilling.

A solid entry in the Grand Guignol cinema of the 1960s, if not consistently on par with Geraldine Page's Aunt Alice? or the Davis/Crawford thumpfest Baby Jane.

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