Now, Voyager
Director: Irving Rapper
Year Released: 1942
Rating: 1.5
Insufferably tacky "woman's picture" has rich heiress Charlotte (Betty Davis) going from catatonic, trembling and repressed dweeb (because of Bad Mom) to worldly 'mistress' after some counseling by a well-meaning psychiatrist (Claude Rains) and a cruise with a married man (Paul Henreid) around South America. Henreid burns holes into Davis' eyes with his staring (after providing cigarettes for her to eloquently puff on) while Davis pulls the 'transformation' act by removing her glasses (always a key cinematic sign for becoming 'mature'), fixing her hair and plucking her eyebrows - Max Steiner's overbearing score is present to heighten the already overwrought melodrama. I'm hardly a feminist scholar, but someone please explain to me how opting to be someone's secret lover (don't tell me the Davis-Henreid relationship is purely platonic) - while acting as a surrogate mother for his emotionally tweaked daughter with Daddy Issues - is in any way Pro-Woman.
