‘Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars…‘
In 1941, novelist Olive Prouty published her ninth novel Now, Voyager. Widely believed to be the first fictional depiction of psychotherapy, the novel was indicative of Prouty’s lifelong commitment to taking mental health seriously (she was a close personal friend of troubled writer Sylvia Plath). Less than a year later, this film adaptation arrived, directed by Irving Rapper, and while it is undoubtedly progressive in its handling of mental illness, it is also very old-fashioned in other ways…
Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a drab, ‘overweight’ woman (she isn’t, but the dialogue tells us repeatedly that she is) who is utterly dominated by her aristocratic mother (Gladys Cooper). After being introduced to Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), a psychiatrist, by her sister-in-law, Lisa (Ilka Chase), Charlotte agrees to spend some time in the sanitarium. Unsurprisingly, she blossoms when liberated from her mother’s watchful gaze, even going through the classic Hollywood makeover of taking off her glasses and wearing a dress instead of a jumper all the time. She blossoms so much in fact that she finds herself aboard a luxury cruise where she is swept off her feet by the spectacularly named Jeremiah Duvaux Durrance (Paul Henreid) – a fellow passenger who is travelling for business. The two hit it off but Durrance is married and so they go their separate ways. Charlotte returns home to find that her mother is as poisonous as ever and her newfound independence inevitably rubs up against her mother’s shrewishness.
While Cooper is wonderfully malevolent and was duly nominated for an Oscar for her noxious performance as the antagonist, this is very much Bette Davis’ film. Her towering performance was also Oscar-nominated (she won) and Rapper claimed that her constant interventions on set left him “angry and exhausted”. You can’t argue with the results, however. Davis excels at playing both sides of the Charlotte Vale coin – submissive church mouse and flamboyant city girl – and it’s a testament to her natural star power that she is convincing throughout.
Unfortunately, Now, Voyager falls into many of the wartime trappings that make many films from this era feel particularly archaic. It’s too sentimental. Too staid. Too… respectable. The ending scene, which now feels like a parody of a Victorian advert for cigarettes is also particularly harmful. That being said, I mostly enjoyed Now, Voyager and it’s certainly worth watching for Davis’ virtuoso turn alone.
