Watch All This, and Heaven Too For Free

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I quote this line from Pierre's worthy advice for Henriette to leave the house before it's too late.Unfortunately she declined the advice and insisted on staying bringing catastrophic incidents on the whole family including the man she loved.I think that Henriette didn't really love Le Duc but she only admired his character as being decent gentle and a kind father.She tells Pierre that Le Duc is a fine gentleman. If it were a real sincere love Henriette would have left the house as soon as possible saving the children and the man she loved the tragic incidents that happened later Charles Boyer's natural gift of subtle romantic performance remains insuperable.He stole the scenes whenever he appeared on the screen and the scene of his dying was really a masterpiece.I wonder why he is underappreciated and one can rarely find critics discussing or analysing his work.In fact the whole atmosphere of the movie is enchanting and captivating.I must admit that I am caught in the spell of the movie especially Boyer's magic performance and I don't even wish to escape.

A really fine movie. Looks great, Fine script of a fascinating story. Boyer was never HOTTER!!!. Barbara O'Neill is brilliant and horrifying.. The story is fascinating and important. The one flaw and it is a big one is Davis. Against type? Maybe cast against type but she can't play against type. She always finds a way to be Bette Davis. The famous mannerisms were never greater minus a cigarette. The character must be vulnerable. DeHavilland? Her Sister? Maris Ouspenskya? Joan Crawford? (well, maybe not). It is not a simple character, she is strong but not a soubrette. There is little or no humor. Davis had a similar conflict in Now Voyager for which she was well suited. She must have been honored that MGM had chosen but she should have known better. Somehow the script can still evoke tears and fears. Try to ignore (though it isn't easy) the great flaw and you will have a great time.

Ex-governess Bette Davis (Deluszy) arrives at a school as a French teacher but the pupils have uncovered her scandalous past. Davis recounts her story to win them over. The film is based on a true story so it scores a point for that. However, nothing really happens for an hour and a half, and it's almost two hours into the film before a murder takes place. This should be the central point of the film if the film is to be any good. It isn't and consequently the film suffers. It's just pretty goddam long.It's a woman's film with the majority of screen time taken up with annoying children and over dramatics. The children are soooo ghastly with a special mention to the drippy, wimpy boy at the beginning of the film who falls ill. He is a total whinge-head later on as well. I'm not going to give him credit with a mention as I can't be bothered to look up his name. Similarly, the awful middle sister spends the film joyously happy and smiley and totally unconvincing and basically needs a slap. All the girls look a bit weird, but, more irritating is how all the children manage to be so insincere. One truly awful family of brats.Charles Boyer is good in his role as the Duke while Bette Davis plays a goody two-shoes role. She's OK but it's not an exciting role. The best in the cast is Barbara O'Neill as the Duchess. The film only gets interesting when she is involved. It's all, unfortunately, a load of tosh that's made for women and ends in an extremely vomit-inducing way. Boo hoo, boo hoo.

How do you give a character charisma? Make her go through a preexisting scandal, but don't reveal anything about it other than it being bad and compare it to gossipers who show no tolerance towards the person because of it. This movie has one of the most emotional introductions I have ever seen in a movie. If there was any scene where Bette Davis shined as an actress, it was in the first 10 minutes. I knew nothing about her by that point and I was ready to cry. You can tell that this is a tragedy because it starts out after something bad apparently happened, but what sets this above tragedies like Grave Of The Fireflies and Romeo And Juliet is that it doesn't say that they die or it doesn't say what happens other than something bad happened. It builds suspense, but once it becomes clear how it happens the viewer waits for it to happen with no more surprises. All This And Heaven Too only says something really really bad happened, which can really mean anything. So it can get to a point where you think it couldn't get any worse and you assume that there is only resolutions left. Then something happens to make things even worse. It's brilliant how the movie creates such great plot twists that are as quick as they are comfortable with good lead-ins which start with a great introduction that makes you love Bette Davis's character almost instantly.One of the best things besides the plot points is the dialog. It's one of the most interesting screenplays I have heard from the 1940's. The dialog feels structured, but not too structured like a free verse poem. It falls somewhere between William Shakespeare and Joss Whedon with its cookie cutter dialog that draws the viewer in by believing that every bit of dialog is as important as the rest. With so many small details in movies, it is nice to feel compelled to focus on them. It also makes anyone look like a good actor, no matter how good or bad that actor truly is.Another good thing about the movie was great us of fade-ins and fade-outs. It also did a great job of using lighting. There was one specific shot where Bette Davis was trying to help a sick child and the light shined on her brightly in contrast to the background which was completely black making the scene feel like it was her being an angel protecting the child from the bad scenario surrounding them.The framing also focused on people by zooming in or zooming out to get the viewer ready to feel like they are seeing things from one person's perspective.There was so much I loved about the movie, there couldn't be anything wrong with it. Right? I didn't give it a 10. It has two flaws I can think about.1-The movie felt like it was too much. It needed to be 2.5 hours, but I felt like there was so much movie I was experiencing in each minute that I was getting tired by the end. I still loved it, but I would've been very satisfied with 1.5 hours.2-The biggest flaw in the whole movie was the sound editing. It was bad! I know in 1940, it wasn't easy for people to edit sound exactly to one frame, but there were at least 20 times when dialog was off by 1 second. It was like watching a kung fu movie. I was waiting for Bette Davis to beat up the Duchess with some Chinese Boxing moves. It was disappointing because I found so much to love about the movie, but the sound editing became distracting.I still would recommend this movie to a lot of people. It's rare I find a movie with this good of a narrative and story as well. The end was good too.