Movie · 1940 · Crime, Drama · 1h 35m · NR · English
Curator score: 7.5/10 (29.5K ratings)
Fascinating, Tantalizing and DANGEROUS!
Overview
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.5/10
IMDb: 7.5/10
Letterboxd: 3.67/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Metacritic: 84
TMDB: 7.3/10
Director
William Wyler
Production
Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard, Bruce Lester, Elizabeth Inglis, Cecil Kellaway, Victor Sen Yung, Doris Lloyd, Willie Fung, Tetsu Komai, Zita Baca, Brooks Benedict, William A. Boardway, David Bruce, James Carlisle, George Ford, Roland Got, Sam Harris
Curator Review
Verdict
A stylish pre-noir melodrama with a killer opening, strong atmosphere, and a famously icy Bette Davis turn. It’s also morally messy and increasingly uncomfortable in its colonial setting, so it lands best as a craft-forward classic rather than a purely pleasurable one.
Best for
classic Hollywood fans
pre-noir and courtroom drama viewers
Bette Davis admirers
stylish black-and-white melodrama
viewers interested in morally compromised protagonists
Skip if
you want a fast-moving thriller
you’re sensitive to racist colonial-era depictions
you prefer sympathetic leads
you dislike old-Hollywood melodrama and fatalism
Overview
The Letter is one of those old Hollywood crime dramas that announces itself immediately: a shocking act of violence, a coolly controlled star performance, and a web of guilt that only tightens as the story goes on. William Wyler stages it with real visual confidence, using shadow, composition, and silence to turn a relatively simple premise into something tense and poisonous.
Worth noting
Bette Davis is the main event, playing a woman whose composure is as revealing as any confession. The film is at its best when it lets her ambiguity do the work, and when the legal and emotional consequences start to collide. It’s a pre-noir in spirit, with betrayal, repression, and punishment hanging over every scene.
Bottom line
That said, the film’s colonial setting is not just dated but actively troubling, and modern viewers will likely have to reckon with racist imagery and attitudes throughout. If you can separate the craft from the ideology, there’s a lot to admire here; if not, the film’s ugliness may overwhelm its strengths.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Sara Clements (4★) · 461 likes
"he tried to make love to me and i shot him"
bitch me too the fuck
eely (3★) · 208 likes
this movie is setting a precedent and if bette davis doesn’t kill a man in the first five minutes of every other movie she’s in then i’m going to be severely disappointed!
Ethan Colburn (3★) · 174 likes
With one of the best opening scenes I’d seen in old Hollywood, Bette Davis shoots a man in cold blood, this film starts off on a high, and sort of drags on from there. It has a few fun moments, and it’s interesting to see things unfold but it doesn’t have the pacing or the Bette Davis performance I was hoping for.
Davis isn’t given quite as much as I’d like to see her given in this. She has very… more
emily (4★) · 173 likes
i love any movie where bette davis kills a man
mina · 145 likes
you just know that whenever an old hollywood movie is set in asia it’s going to be a racist shit show