Now, Voyager

1942

This is one of those movies that I’ve seen a dozen times and never realized it was all about sex until I tried to write about it. Yes, it’s about finding your identity and learning to stand up for yourself. It’s about what it means to be a grown woman with choices, and it’s even about the redemptive power of proper eyebrow grooming. But at its core, this is totally a movie about sex.

Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, and she’s a mess. When we first meet her it’s because her sister-in-law Lisa (Ilka Chase) has arranged for a psychiatrist (played with quiet warmth by usually-a-villain Claude Rains) to come to the family mansion in Boston for what amounts to an intervention.

Charlotte is middle-aged and beyond dumpy. She wears glasses because her mother thinks she should. She carries extra weight because her mother doesn’t believe in slimming. She wears baggy dresses and sensible shoes—you can guess why. Her mother (Gladys Cooper) is a domineering tyrant, who refers to Charlotte as “My ugly duckling.” And that’s when she’s being nice. Charlotte, we learn, is having a nervous breakdown. Who wouldn’t be? The only thing that gives me hope for her is that she smokes in secret. Rebellion! Yes! (I mean, smoking itself, no, but rebellion, big yes.)

The horrible mother agrees for Charlotte to go for a cure at the doctor’s Vermont sanitorium because she fears the shame that news of Charlotte’s crackup might bring to the sacred family name. Also because Claude Rains calls her out. “My dear Mrs. Vale, if you had deliberately and maliciously planned to destroy your daughter’s life you couldn’t have done it more completely.” Go, Claude.

It’s during a conversation with the doctor that we find out Charlotte wasn’t always a scared, sexless rabbit. Quite the contrary. When she was twenty she had a shipboard romance while on a cruise with her mother. He was a dishy sailor and all the girls were after him, but he chose Charlotte because “I was so responsive.” Really. Do tell… Of course the couple is found out—found in mid-makeout session, in what Charlotte calls “the proudest moment of my life.” Interesting.

Mother, as you can imagine, brings down the hammer. And the result is the sad old spinster still hiding those cigarettes. Until…self-esteem happens. No, they didn’t call it that in 1942, but you know what good therapy and a healthy lifestyle can do for a woman. In a movie, at least. After months of healing Charlotte is ready to leave Vermont. But she isn’t going home. No, no, no! She’s going on another cruise! This one to South America, and notably without Mother.

This is where we have The Shot, people. The shot of Charlotte stepping off the ship and into her new life. And you better believe she takes that step wearing heels! She’s so chic it’s insane. The glasses are gone, the eyebrows are perfect, and the lipstick totally on point. The dress is fitted to show off her new slim waist, and this shot is the best argument there will ever be for bringing back hats. Please, can we bring back hats?

There is, inevitably, A Man on the ship (Paul Henreid). He and Charlotte are thrown together and it’s awkward at first because she doesn’t know how to act around a normal, but then it isn’t awkward anymore because it’s perfect. They’re perfect for each other. We know they’re perfect for each other because of the way Max Steiner’s theme music swells every time they’re together. (“Wrong, would it be wrong to kiss? Seeing I feel like this…” Trust me, it’s dreamy.)

The only thing that mars all the perfection is the fact that the man—Jerry—is married. Yup. Unhappily, we learn from the wife of a friend, but he’s too much of a saint to leave the wife and abandon his emotionally fragile daughter. (Okay, okay, but maybe that wasn’t quite as cliché in 1942? Just go with it.)

So they’re perfect for each other but they can’t be together. And it’s that longing, that just-out-of-reach love that they can see but they know they can’t have that keeps me coming back to this movie. I’ve never smoked, but when Jerry lights two cigarettes and takes one from his lips to put it on Charlotte’s, it’s an iconic movie moment and still shockingly swoon-worthy. It’s almost a kiss. Almost.

You know how I just said they can’t be together? Ha! Not so! Because of a truck accident and a missed ship they get five glorious days in Rio. And Charlotte gets to be all kinds of “responsive” again. They are together, if only for a moment, but in the world of this movie adults know that sometimes that’s all you get. Sometimes you can only have “that little strip of territory that’s ours.” Sigh.

And then the trip is over, and Charlotte goes back to Boston, where her new backbone is very much in evidence. Mother is not a fan. But Charlotte, let’s not forget, is played by Bette Davis. Do you think she’ll crumble again? Not with Max Steiner’s music playing, she won’t! Not with her memories of being loved to give her strength. She may still be single, but Charlotte Vale is no old maid anymore.

There’s more, involving a new boyfriend and a chance meeting with Jerry’s daughter (!!) but I won’t tell you the rest. Because the last line of this movie is one of the best, most tear-jerking lines in all of movies, and I want you to earn it. Bette did.

Societal thoughts

Okay, so this movie has a disturbing inclination to equate being pretty with being lovable. How many of us have internalized that message from how many movies? Or, for that matter, from how many makeover shows? Cut it out, Hollywood! On the other hand, Charlotte’s pre-Vermont eyebrows were tragic.

Voyaging thoughts

There has never been a more romantic place to say goodbye than a train station. Fact.