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Mr. Skeffington Movie Review

Mr. Skeffington is a 1944 drama film directed by Vincent Sherman and starring Bette Davis and Claude Rains. It is a flawed, but highly engaging melodrama.

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“A woman’s beautiful only when she is loved“

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Popular and beautiful Fanny Trellis is forced into a loveless marriage with an older man, Jewish banker Job Skeffington, in order to save her beloved brother Trippy from an embezzlement charge. That is only the initial premise behind this very long movie that clocks in at around two and a half hours. The rest of it is concerned with Fanny’s countless affairs and her eventual downfall.

The main theme here is vanity and this woman’s obsession with beauty. The message is that the woman is beautiful only when she is loved, which was a great message to counter vanity, but it was still overly simplified as the reality is much more complex than that. The film is extremely melodramatic, especially in that ending, but I loved it for that as I am a big fan of these classic melodramas from 40s and 50s and this was my cup of tea despite its numerous issues.

The protagonist is very difficult to empathize with as she is a genuinely terrible person. Still though, Bette Davis has always excelled at playing these unlikable women, so this was no different. Her range was evident here as she goes form charming to manipulative to plain selfish while consistently stealing attention from all the other characters and actors. She was amazing and she was rightfully nominated by the Academy once again for her work here.

Most of the other characters come and go, so they aren’t really important for the story, except for the titular man himself played so wonderfully by Claude Rains. The two develop a powerful relationship toward the end and that was the heart of the film while their dynamic was both playful and quite endearing.

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Mr. Skeffington has an obvious tonal issue. As Bosley Crowther himself so eloquently put it, it switches the moods constantly, going from sort of a comedy to a more serious drama. And I would contend that the comedic angle was the way to go as some of the dialogue here was actually very funny and smart. That playfulness was lost in an overly dramatic second half, which was a shame. The score and cinematography are both quite good while the directing could have been better. It’s an underrated movie that is pretty solid at the end of the day.