Movie · 1938 · Drama, Romance · 1h 43m · NR · English
Curator score: 9.0/10 (16.4K ratings)
Half angel, half siren, all woman.
Overview
In 1850s Louisiana, the willfulness of a tempestuous Southern belle threatens to destroy all who care for her.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.0/10
IMDb: 7.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
Metacritic: 82
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
William Wyler
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Crisp, Fay Bainter, Richard Cromwell, Henry O'Neill, Spring Byington, John Litel, Irving Pichel, Theresa Harris, Janet Shaw, Margaret Early, Lou Payton, Gordon Oliver, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Matthew Beard, Georges Renavent, Mary Field
Curator Review
Verdict
A lush, morally thorny Southern melodrama anchored by one of Bette Davis’s defining performances. It’s elegant, emotionally charged, and knowingly cruel about vanity, pride, and social performance, though its antebellum setting and racial politics are deeply compromised by modern standards.
Best for
classic Hollywood melodrama fans
Bette Davis admirers
viewers who like period dramas with sharp emotional conflict
fans of doomed romance and social scandal
Skip if
you want a modern sensibility about race and slavery
you prefer understated acting and low-key drama
you’re looking for fast pacing or action-heavy storytelling
Overview
Jezebel is one of those old Hollywood dramas that feels built around a star at full voltage. Bette Davis gives Julie Marsden a dangerous mix of vanity, charm, and self-destruction, and the film is smart enough to let that contradiction drive every scene. William Wyler stages the story with polish and restraint, which makes the emotional eruptions hit harder when they arrive.
Worth noting
What lingers is the movie’s uneasy blend of romance, social ritual, and punishment. It’s a film about a woman trying to force the world to bend to her will, and about the cost of that defiance in a rigid society. The result is compelling, often deliciously melodramatic, and still surprisingly sharp in its character dynamics.
Bottom line
At the same time, it’s impossible to ignore the film’s plantation-era setting and the way it frames the Old South. That context is not incidental, and the movie’s worldview is dated and troubling. Even so, as a piece of performance-driven studio melodrama, it remains a major showcase for Davis and a durable example of classical Hollywood craft.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Marian (3.5★) · 718 likes
bette davis' eyes are the reason i'm a lesbian
cassandra (5★) · 356 likes
There will never be another Bette Davis.
Neill Shaughness (3.5★) · 260 likes
They tried to fight a disease with canons. No wonder they lost the civil war.
b rad (4★) · 225 likes
Forever connected with Gone With The Wind, this antebellum set film shares not just the time and place gone by of that great epic, but a similarly three dimensional anti-heroine who the audience has a complicated relationship with through the film. There's also a sense of ambiguity towards the ending that you rarely see in such elegant, old-fashioned films that makes for tantalising viewing.
It's a bit light on the major ideas - it doesn't lie about slavery like GWTW,… more
esther · 194 likes
nothing will be funnier to me than the fact that men used to duel, like... what are you being so extra for