Marked Woman review

The little lady and I just got done watching Marked Woman, a Bette Davis/Humphrey Bogart movie directed by Lloyd Bacon (who also brought Knute Rockne to the screen, introducing to a wide audience a certain Ronald Reagan, hehe). The 1936 crime piece is about "hostesses" (read: prostitutes) who operate in a mob owned clip joint. One of the hostesses, played by Davis, gets involved in a murder and initially resists the ADA (played by Bogart) in convicting the mobster - but after the hostesses' sister is murdered she bravely plays ball with law enforcement and brings the mobster to justice. Apparently the movie was inspired by New York's protracted battle against Lucky Luciano.

I really just watch loving Bette Davis act. She's just so splendid. Bogart and most of the supporting cast are also quite good, and at times the actor who plays the gangster, Eduardo Ciannelli, almost steals the show. But the reason to see the movie is, without a doubt, the chance to see Bette Davis act. She plays a wonderfully dignified, street smart call girl and the script doesn't degrade her, nor the other women in it. The thirties in cinema really was the height of this kind of behavior - movies with female roles that weren't just pathetic pandering girl stories of female sisterhood or whatever, banal romantic comedies or the even worse multitude of stories where women are merely victims of appendages of male protagonists. Roles where women could be honestly powerful started to decline in the 40s, and by the late 50s were almost gone altogether. They were gone by the 60s and 70s. Though they've started to return, I am just staggered at the numerous powerful female roles that I see in the cinema of the 30s, before women's role in movies was reduced to nothing but cheesecake victims as it has been much of my adult life. Because of when I was born, I grew up in an atmosphere almost void of powerful female characters. On the rare occasion Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts would make a movie that was a cut above the standard fare even those actresses are generally forced to work with, it was like a small window into a different film making universe where women weren't second class citizens. To me, Bette Davis flings open all the doors to that world - while the movies acknowledge the social reality of woman's powerlessness in a man's world, the movies, themselves, by featuring women in so many fully developed roles have really opened my eyes.

The upshot being, see this movie. And see a lot of movies with Bette Davis in them. Even the bad ones are pretty good. And see how movies were made before female roles in movies were crushed by all those banking interests who didn't want women to get uppity ideas.