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Simply Perfect

A lot of fun.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In New York, the playboy Peter 'Pete' Van Allen (George Brent) marries the famous pianist Sandra Kovak (Mary Astor) after a party. A couple of days later, his lawyer Lock Thompson (Jerome Cowan) tell him that their marriage is not valid, since Sandra's divorce of the previous husband is not concluded. Pete is a distinguished pilot and he flies to Maryland to meet his former fiancée Maggie Patterson (Bette Davis) in her farm. Maggie tells that her uncle has offered a position of pilot to work for the government. Pete returns to New York and tells Sandra that they need to marry again on the next week. However she has a concert in Philadelphia and tells that she cannot marry him on that date. Pete travels to Maryland and tells Maggie that he is free to marry her. They get married and soon Maggie learns that Sandra is pregnant. However Pete is missing and the search party does not find him. Maggie seeks out Sandra and proposes to adopt her baby; in return she would give a generous amount for the pianist. However when Pete is found in Manaus, Sandra visits Maggie and Pete and blackmails Maggie, expecting to have the child and Pete back."The Great Lie" is an exaggerated melodrama with Bette Davis, Mary Astor and George Brent. Pete is a shallow character that does not work and leaves Sandra in a ridiculous way to stay with Maggie. The rivals do not have much reason to be with Pete. The conclusion is dull, with Pete giving up of his son. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "A Grande Mentira" ("The Great Lie")

When did Maryland look like Atlanta, GA with the vast array of weeping willows or was it magnolias and mint juleps... maybe the grits are believable but guess a moot point given the interesting proposition underlying the title. I could not believe the diet she had to go on with a doctor from Arizona, salsa pahleeze! I found the basic plot completely believable as almost the same situation occurred to a friend and risked breaking up her marriage. Thankfully all turned out well when she called her bluff. Given the time frame the plot made all the sense in the world except perhaps suddenly wanting to destroy a family for pure revenge. I loved the verbal as well physical sparring of the two women with the softer side of Davis. I did not find the piano playing convincing at all when the camera always showed the combo of her face with hands pretty much in shadow or conveniently cut off from view. I mean really, it was a few slow chords. If she was even fairly competent she could play that intro. They did overplay that song and found it annoying. And that George by gosh did he ever come alive and looked manly and confident, surprisingly refreshing! I found the script compelling and intriguing with many delightful twists. High recommend for yet another Davis squabble and Brent generating romance.

The quintessential soap opera plot is two women fighting over the same man. Here it is in pure form, with Mary Astor obsessed with stealing George Brent away from Bette Davis. Nothing subtle about Mary Astor here, just blatant bitchery. You kind of wonder what the George Brent character saw in her to marry her in the first place (though the marriage proved not to be legal).But then, this story is so very improbable that questioning motives is beside the point.It's interesting to see the Brent character from what could be construed as "the woman's view" back in 1941, when men were supposed to do Important Things while women cooked and sewed and discussed the love affairs of others. All we know about George Brent is that he has gone off to do something in "aviation." (This makes sense, since he flies a plane.) What men did for a living was not a woman's concern--and was assumed to be too difficult for her to understand anyway.To be fair to Mary Astor, once the camera closes in on her face, so that we no longer have to look at the unflattering clothes she wears in this film, we can see that she was very beautiful.Bette Davis is, however, the reason I watched this movie in the first place. She is almost always interesting to watch. A diminutive woman, she lacked the full figure and glamorous face of the traditional female movie star. What she had that was far more memorable, however, was a great range of expression and a vivacity that made her beautiful in a deeper sense. In most of her pictures, even the bad ones, she is fun to watch.Ah, then there are the black folks, a whole big cast of them, with Hattie McDaniel at the top of the list, all of them having a happy time around the ole plantation. They are treated decently in this movie, at least in comparison with many other films of the time with black characters. But that's not saying much. What it means is that the stereotypes that they portray are seen in a condescendingly kindly light, rather than subject to mockery or made to look foolish.Yes, 1941 was a very different era from today.

The Great Lie (1941)This is really a fabulous mixture of great movie themes, and it pulls it together to make its own amazing statement about fidelity and love. And class. And pre-war America, seemingly isolated but actually trapped by world events.Within ten minutes there is first an echo of My Man Godfrey (George Brent in this case making a more mainstream Powell) and then a swoop down for a taste of Gone with the Wind or even closer, Jezebel (the plantation south, even though it's 1940 or so). Then it's a melodrama straight up, and tragedy, and even if the plot is improbable, you go with it and get swept away. Brent plays Pete, a man caught between two women, both of money, but one cosmopolitan and used to being in charge, and one a lively, warm woman living a more earthy life. At the start it seems Pete is married to the urbane one, a concert pianist, Sandra, played with typical poise and ice by Mary Astor (compare this to her more famous role in The Maltese Falcon from the same year). She's a professional woman, in charge of her life, and, lately, Pete's. She wants independence and culture, and man with his feet on the ground. But Brent's country girl, an ex-love (and true love, it seems) Maggie is played to perfection by Bette Davis. The music here, and the support cast is African American, which makes for a more heart warming, and wrenching, background. He pays a visit to Maggie the day after his wedding (for reasons that slowly clarify) and the dynamic is set. And the twists begin. We have a contemporary drama between recognizable stereotypes as World War II looms for the U.S. Early on, Sandra asks Pete after his visit to Maggie, "Did you get it?" He says, "What?" Sexual innuendo intact, the Hays code chaffing, she clarifies, "The air?" What a great simple example of how movies so often played brilliantly with innuendo because the code wouldn't allow a straighter interplay. Director Edmund Goulding is not as well known as some of his contemporaries, but he has a few masterpieces in his lot, including the Bette Davis Dark Victory and the later Razor's Edge. For me, The Great Lie is maybe short of perfect--the plot does intrude on our sense of suspending disbelief--but it's really fast, moving, well written, and well directed. No question.