One night on a Malaysian rubber plantation, sleeping workers hear a gunshot from the house of the foreman, Robert Crosbie. More shots follow and we see Crosbie’s wife Leslie (Bette Davis, pictured) follow a man staggering down the steps to collapse on the ground as she empties her pistol into him. She seems in a state of shock. Robert (Herbert Marshall), his attorney Howard Joyce (James Stephenson) and the police are sent for. Calmer now, she tells a very coherent story: Geoff Hammond, an old friend, stopped by, unannounced and a bit drunk. He continued drinking as he declared his love for Leslie. She tried to discourage him but eventually he assaulted her. She grabbed a pistol from a drawer and shot him six times, not quite aware of what she was doing. Though she'll have to be arrested and charged, Howard foresees an open-and-shut case of self-defense. Even the policeman agrees; both men seem charmed and a bit in awe of Leslie. However, Howard's native clerk Ong (Victor Sen Yung) complicates the case when he comes to Howard with news of a letter that Leslie sent to Hammond on the night of the murder, saying she was desperate to see him. The letter is in the possession of Mrs. Hammond (Gale Sondergaard), a notorious Eurasian woman. Smelling a blackmail attempt, Howard asks Leslie, being held in Singapore before her trial, about the letter. At first she denies having written it, then admits she did, but only because she wanted Hammond's advice about what kind of gun to buy Robert for his birthday. Howard doesn't believe her but, against his better judgment, agrees to buy the letter for $10,000, all the money that Robert has in savings. Mrs. Hammond demands that Leslie deliver the money herself, a degrading prospect made even worse when Mrs. Hammond throws the letter on the floor and makes Leslie pick it up. All this is kept from Robert until after the trial when the truth about everything is finally exposed, leading to tragedy.
Based on a story and play by W. Somerset Maugham, and not quite on the level of something like CASABLANCA, this is a fine example of the Hollywood studio system at its best. All the performances are great: Davis as steely but conniving, Marshall as hoodwinked and ultimately devastated, Yung as coldly practical, and Sondergaard who creates a fascinating character in only a few minutes of screen time and almost no dialogue. The underplaying Stephenson is a standout as a conflicted man who risks his legal reputation to make sure Leslie goes free. William Wyler directs his actors well, and with cinematographer Tony Gaudio, crafts an exotic looking visual style with an atmospheric use of shadows and moonlight. The opening, Bette Davis coldly firing away on the front porch at Hammond (whose face we never see), is a classic.
The 1929 version plays out a bit differently. For starters, the first ten minutes presents what remains unseen in the 1940 film, so we know unambiguously what led up to the shooting. We see Robert (Reginald Owen) leave for an errand in Singapore, after which Leslie (Jeanne Eagels) sends a houseboy off with the letter summoning Hammond (Herbert Marshall, who was Robert in the later film). We learn they've been lovers for some time but he thinks she's gotten too clingy, and he wants to end it, especially since he's got a hot Eurasian mistress, Li-Ti. When Leslie threatens suicide, Hammond says he's sick of the sight of her and starts to leave. She then shoots him dead (which is where the 1940 movie begins). The rest is pretty much the same until the end. Being a pre-Code film, this version can let Leslie get off more or less unpunished, whereas Bette Davis has to meet a bad end. Both versions allow Leslie to deliver the famous line from the play, "With all my heart and soul, I still love the man I killed!" Eagels' delivery is more effective because it's the last shot of the movie; the Davis version goes on for a few more minutes to allow a Code-sanctioned ending. Eagels (pictured with Marshall) was a well-known stage actor with a reputation as difficult. She only made three sound films before dying of a drug overdose just months after the release of this movie; she was only 39. Her acting here is fairly stagy, occasionally with a Billie Burke-style tone in her voice, and she has a couple of moments when she seems to be searching for her lines, though she definitely brings the melodrama. Marshall, usually a bit stodgy (as he is in the 1940 film), is nicely scruffy and decadent here. The movie, an early talkie, suffers from a lack of any background music. Though I liked seeing the circumstances of the murder in full here, the 1940 film, thanks in part to the opening, is a classic that can't be beat. [DVD/Criterion Channel]
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