The Old Maid

USA, 1939. Directed by Edmund Goulding. Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan, Louise Fazenda.

Civil war melodrama based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Zoe Akins from a novel by Edith Wharton. Davis and Hopkins are cousins whose love-lives become interwined, resulting in the birth of an illegitimate daughter for Davis. Such are the twists and turns of the plot that many years later the daughter regards Hopkins as her mother and Davis as an embittered old maid. It’s not my favourite Bette Davis film, but the two leads give powerhouse performances and the storyline gives a fascinating insight into a time when illegitimacy was socially unacceptable and faced outright discrimination from the wealthy classes.