How others will see it. Dark Victory promotes the notion that the end of life is not tragic, if the soul is noble and the hyacinths (or whatever) are properly planted. I don't react to this movie as if it were an Evita-styled tear jerker. Your mileage may vary, however.
A well made and fast moving film from the greatest year of the movie industry, the Warner Bros. power and execution ensures that all the ingredients for greatness are present. The cast and production is all there, at the disposal of Bette Davis, then perhaps the biggest actress in Hollywood at the time, although Kate Hepburn might have disagreed.
How I felt about it. The problem isn't with the brisk pace of director Goulding, and it certainly isn't with the series of funny faces that best friend Geraldine Fitzgerald makes when she receives bad news. Part of the problem, as I see it, is with George Brent. He's the nicest, most understanding, most devastatingly handsome, and most available highly esteemed young surgeon in history. He doesn't smoke, drink, cuss, get angry, eat pork, chase hottie Fitzgerald, or do anything other research and play with his one and only patient, Bette Davis.
Another part (this is where I not only give away chunks of the plot but reveal the ending, so avert your eyes now or forever hold your piece) of the problem is Davis' brain tumor. The doctors just know that not only will the seemingly perfectly fine Davis die within months, but that there will be no symptoms until the last few hours, when there will be only one symptom, blindness.
And wouldn't you know it, the blindness occurs within minutes of best friend Ann's arrival, and within minutes of the important doctor heading off to an important convention, which I'm sure has no bachelor activities associated with it.
This way, Davis can say goodbye to her loved ones in her own,
Highest Graded Films of 1956
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