Essential William Wyler: 1940's The Letter

Film director William Wyler may be the least appreciated auteur from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Despite repeated honors from the Academy, including three Best Director Oscars for Mrs. Miniver in 1942, The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946, and Ben-Hur, 1959's epic to end all epics, Wyler's reputation has suffered since his retirement in 1970. While these three films alone should solidify Wyler's star in the cinema firmament, film history and its gatewatchers occasionally do not give the greats their due. While the reputations of Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Sam Fuller, and even Budd Boetticher have improved over the last forty or fifty years, Wyler's has not. William Wyler's best defense in the face of a lessened reputation, however, is--as Andrew Sarris said of director George Cukor--his filmography. From 1936 to 1965, Wyler's films equaled the best of his generation: Dodsworth and These Three, Dead End, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, The Little Foxes, and The Heiress constitute an incredible run of good-to-great cinema--and this list only covers 1936 to 1949.

For me, Wyler is an amazing director, seemingly without a personal style. His films did not distract with arty camera angles and unique editing styles; rather, he set himself apart by maintaining a visual style that did not call attention to itself. Wyler favored long takes, usually in medium or two shot, sometimes employing the "deep focus" technique favored by his favorite cinematographer (and one of Hollywood's best), Gregg Toland, with occasional closeups to emphasize a dramatic moment or important bit of information. Wyler's reluctance to move the camera became his own visual style. This is one of the reasons The Letter with Bette Davis may be my favorite of the director and star's three collaborations. For me, The Letter stands side-by-side with Dodsworth (1936), Wyler's impressively mature adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, and The Best Years of Our Lives, the classic Best Picture Oscar winner from 1946 as the best of Wyler's work.

The Letter fascinates me. Made and released in 1940, the film is a remake of a 1929 goodie, starring the legendary Jeanne Eagles in the lead role (played by Davis in the remake). Like the remake, the original film also starred Herbert Marshall, albeit in the role of Leslie Crosbie's lover/victim, who is never actually seen in Wyler's remake except in shadow as he is shot by Davis' Leslie. Wyler's version is about as lurid as a major Hollywood studio like Warner Brothers could get away with in 1940 as the plot unfolds to include the marriage of a European man and an Asian woman, the depiction of a kind of opium den in a Chinatown shop, and the victim's widow--the aforementioned Asian woman (Gale Sondergaard, playing the widow of the murdered man as a silent, intense, honorable, passionate, wronged woman in what, for me, is one of the most appealing aspects of the film)--hell bent on gaining revenge for her husband's death. (The letter of the title implicates Leslie as the lover of the man she killed. The price to buy the letter is $10,000, all the money her husband has in savings. The letter is obtained, Leslie is found not guilty, yet her marriage is destroyed. In the film's final scene, the victim's widow takes her revenge on Leslie.) 

The great Gale Sondergaard as the widow and owner of The Letter

This is all highly melodramatic stuff and not easy to pull off, but William Wyler and his production team were up to the challenge and delivered one of cinema's most operatic films. Max Steiner's over-the-top musical score is delicious in its grandeur and contributes greatly to the heightened dramatics. All the players are exceptional with Bette Davis as the stand-out performer. Bette Davis was at the peak of her reign as queen of Warner Brothers when the film was made in spring of 1940. With recent hits including Dark Victory; The Old Maid; the costume epic Juarez; and Jezebel, which was Jack Warner's gift to Davis after she lost the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, and also directed by Wyler. Davis had wanted to work with Wyler again (the two had an affair during Jezebel, but Wyler had since married) and sought him out as director. Though Wyler was under contract to Sam Goldwyn, one of Hollywood's main independent producers, Warners and Goldwyn worked out a deal for The Letter, and Wyler came to work in May 1940.

This scene caused a big rift in the film's production between Davis and Wyler.

Filming went relatively smoothly until Wyler and Davis clashed over the key line of dialogue. "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!" Leslie tells her cuckolded husband, Robert (Herbert Marshall). Wyler wanted Davis to say the words while she looked Marshall in the eye. Davis thought she should turn away in shame. "If you try to soften the blow, you shouldn't say it at all," Wyler told her. At an impasse, Davis walked off the set. But of course she came back and "did it his way." For the rest of her life Davis thought her way was right, but she lost, she said "to an artist." The Letter was released in November 1940 to great acclaim and solid box office, and, in early 1941, seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Bette Davis, and Best Director for William Wyler. Ultimately, however, the film won nothing but the admiration of the movie-going public.

The ever-present moon

As I said, The Letter fascinates me. Wyler was not known for his striking camera and lighting. The Letter refutes any notion that his camera and lighting styles were pedestrian. The opening is a tracking shot outside the Crosbie house where their rubber plantation workers sleep. As the camera passes the tired men in hammocks, the oppressive the heat and humidity is palpable. Wyler's camera tracks to the end of hammocks when the silence is broken by gunshots. Even more visually impressive is the moon as it makes its ominous presence felt not only in the sky but through window blinds, generating shadows that remind us of the prison bars. No one--not even Wyler--knew what he wanted in a scene until he saw it. That instinct for what is right and true in a scene was Wyler's gift. His friend and fellow director John Huston wondered "where Willy got it." Perhaps The Letter screenwriter Howard Koch said it best: While wrestling with the front office--something that happened more and more over Wyler's meticulous filming method as his career progressed--the director, perhaps unable or unwilling to please the money men, "pleased himself." Luckily, it pleased us too.


Sources

Books: A Talent for Trouble by Jan Herman
            Bette Davis, The Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by Jerry Vermilye
Internet: IMDB
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               Turner Classic Movies
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