William Wyler (23 page)

Entering the ballroom, she remarks, “Terribly sorry to be late. I had trouble with the colt.” As she speaks, she moves her body from side to side and opens up her fingers. Barbara Leaming points out, “The opening of her fingers timed to coincide with her second sentence may seem a small piece of business, especially since it all takes place so quickly…but it is precisely with such subtle effects that Bette and her director create the vivid portrait of Julie Marsden.”
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Wyler had Davis and the cast repeat this entrance sequence nine times before he felt satisfied that the timing was exactly right.

Julie is a split and vacillating individual. She represents and embraces the “Old South” but is also a rebellious individual who must assert herself against those aspects of her world that are holding her back. The film's production notes describe her as a “product of her environment” and one who “typifies it.” In fact, “she IS the deep south, beautiful, exotic, alluring, lavish and also savage and deadly dangerous. She moves by instinct rather than reason…. Her chief traits are absolute ruthlessness of purpose, and an intellectual honesty.”
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In the notes to his treatment, Clements Ripley wrote, “The only way to stop Julie would be to kill her.”
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It is an observation that applies to Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and to Strindberg's Miss Julie as well, for all three heroines are honest enough with themselves to finally embrace death rather than live with the consequences of their impetuous decisions.

Throughout much of the film, Wyler's camera allows Julie to seemingly dominate space, while also trapping and confining her within the boundaries it has established. This ironic effect becomes apparent when she insists to her aunt that she can lure Pres away from his meeting within the male stronghold of Dillard and Sons Investments. Aunt Belle (Fay Bainter) warns her not to go to the bank, but Julie ignores her, intent on proving that she can train Pres to do her bidding. Unlike the shot of Julie entering her home late for her own party, where she dominates the expansive scene despite being framed by the entryway, Wyler now captures her, from a distance, through the bars of a bank teller's station. She is not only dwarfed by the composition but visually trapped within it—implying that Julie's first overt effort to trample on societal conventions will fail, as will her subsequent attempts. After this framing, Wyler allows her to stride all the way across the bank lobby before she is stopped at the door of the meeting room. Julie's confidence in her power is seemingly shared by the camera, but the earlier framing undercuts this confidence and even magnifies her failure when Pres tells her he cannot accompany her to the dressmaker. Julie is defeated, but she will not show it.

Wyler then doubles this scene in a comic way in the dressmaker's shop. Seated on a stool, Julie is trapped within a hoopskirt frame while trying on a white crinoline dress, and Wyler focuses on the image of her back in a mirror, creating a frame within a frame. Uncomfortable in the white dress and determined to exasperate Pres, she demands that it be removed so that she can try on a red dress. With her underwear caught in the hoopskirt frame and exposed in the mirror as well, she flaunts herself in the red dress, which her aunt declares to be a “vulgar” outfit suitable for an “infamous Vickers woman,” as opposed to the traditional, virginal white gowns worn by unmarried women in polite society. Julie, in a show of defiance, objects: “This is 1852…not the Dark Ages. Girls don't have to simp around in white just because they're not married.” She claims to be emancipated, but the framing implies just the opposite.

Wyler repeats some of these patterns when he features Pres. After his meeting at the bank, Pres decides to confront Julie at her home. When he enters the Bogardus mansion, the home of Julie's guardians, he is framed in the doorway, just as Julie was when she arrived late for her party. Like Julie, he hands his riding crop to Uncle Cato. When Julie refuses to come downstairs to greet Pres, he grabs a walking stick, intending to discipline her with it. Upstairs, Wyler's camera follows him as he strides across the hallway, just as it followed Julie across the bank's lobby. Here, Wyler foregrounds the balusters, which Pres clicks with the stick as he moves toward her room. This image presages the futility of his plans—he will be unable to bend Julie to his will, just as she was unable to convince him to leave his meeting.

Julie refuses to open her door, teasing Pres while he repeatedly knocks with his stick. As in the scene at the dressmaker's shop, Julie's amused expression is triple-framed in three mirrors as she is being made up—again indicating that her rebellion will not free her from the constraints of a rigid society. (Her profiled, haughty expression in the middle mirror will be repeated in the Olympus Ball sequence, where she receives her comeuppance.) Here, her victory over Pres—she charms him into kissing her, his stick leaning impotently in the doorway—is only a temporary one. When he leaves, Pres warns her not to wear the red dress to the Olympus Ball.

Julie's visit to Dillard and Sons is preceded by a scene in the bank's boardroom, where Pres is participating in a business conference. Like Julie, he is shown to be out of step with the attitudes of his associates. In the meeting, Pres expresses his belief that the expanding northern railroad lines and freight shipments are bypassing the South, but many of the board members see no reason to invest in the railroads, insisting that sticking with the commerce on the Mississippi River is good enough. Pres's grasp of the changing times neatly mirrors Julie's attitude toward acceptable behavior for women—in both cases, society is dead set against change.

In the same scene, Dr. Livingston, who is also a member of the bank's board, warns about the impending yellow fever epidemic and the need to prepare for it. The board turns a blind eye to this warning as well. Yellow fever, like the idea of war, thus becomes a symbol of the South's self-delusion and its inability to face the future. Unlike
Gone with the Wind, Jezebel
does not sentimentalize the South, for Wyler shows, early on, the willful blindness of its social and business leaders. By the end of the film, New Orleans is a city ravaged by disease—a premonition of the coming war, which will literally and figuratively destroy the region in the decades ahead.

The character who most directly represents the Old South is Buck Cantrell; indeed, in Owen Davis's play, he functions more as a symbol than a character. The film, however, gives Buck some added dimension and stature, showing that he is impulsive, quick to challenge others, and ready to stand up for traditional values. As he remarks at one point, “I like my convictions undiluted, same as I do my bourbon.” Nonetheless, he manages to exhibit a dawning awareness of the limitations of his own values and those of his society. Buck is first presented in a more sympathetic light after Julie and Pres quarrel over her dress. She sends Buck a note inviting him to pick her up the following evening, and when he arrives, she views him from above, framed by a window. Buck is seen going to the door from a high angle (one of Wyler's favorite shots), here suggesting another of Julie's misguided notions—that she can control him. Wyler's framing also foreshadows Buck's death, although, in the scene that follows, Buck will have the last word. He admires Julie's red dress, sarcastically asking, “Are you all dressed up for a hog killing?” When he realizes that she wants him to escort her to the ball to arouse Pres's jealousy, he declines, explaining that southern manners will not allow it: “It's just they got rules and they go by 'em, same as you and I.” Rebuffed, Julie turns to go inside, and Wyler emphasizes her shadow on the door, presaging not only Buck's death but also Julie's and Pres's, and the demise of the world they represent. Buck's most poignant moment comes when he is manipulated by Julie into defending her honor and his own, for Buck knows he has been betrayed. His final words to Julie before he dies—“I guess there's a lot I don't understand”— assume a much wider context than just his impending doom. Finally recognizing the shortcomings of his culture, Buck's words suggest that his view is more closely aligned with Pres's than it was earlier in the film.

The centerpiece of the film is the Olympus Ball, one of Wyler's most memorable accomplishments. The sequence begins with a view of the dais and the king and queen of the ball. The camera then cranes back to take in the dancers on the floor, the scene dominated by a chandelier. The camera movements and the editing emphasize the formality of the event, an elegant reminder of the rule-bound society Buck chastised Julie about moments earlier. Wyler's camera movements are smooth, expressive, and graceful, providing a prelude to the arrival of Pres and Julie, whose audacious appearance immediately upsets the harmony of the scene. Wyler signals this disruption by utilizing more editing as the couple appears to pass through a gauntlet of disapproving expressions while others either look away or turn to avoid them. Davis acts with her eyes, which dart back and forth and flutter up and down as she is shunned by her social group. No longer indulged as the brilliant sensation she was at her own party, she is now treated as a spectacle, an outcast from the society she has offended. Humiliated and embarrassed, she asks Pres to take her home, but he refuses, insisting that they stay and dance.

Wyler then turns their dance into a study in the use of space. Julie's individualism is tested against the expanse of the ballroom, and her confidence breaks down, all the other dancers having retreated to the edges of the frame. Julie's hauteur is dwarfed by the empty space of the ballroom floor; her red dress—which fills the screen twice, as Wyler cuts to it in close-up—emphasizes the enormity of her arrogance and her lack of judgment. A series of close-ups further reflect Julie's embarrassment and her inner struggle as she pleads with Pres to leave.

As the scene shifts to Julie's home, where Pres is saying good-bye, Wyler partially veils Julie's face in shadow; the lighting that accentuated her earlier close-ups is now dimmed. Julie slaps Pres, who pauses, says good-bye again, and walks to his carriage. Wyler then cuts to Julie, whose face and eyes, again in close-up, follow him as he leaves. We hear the carriage departing but see only Julie, whose eyes become a substitute for the camera. Davis's expression registers the completion of Julie's humiliation. As she turns to go into the house, Wyler's camera looks down on her as it did earlier on Buck. Inside, Julie climbs the stairs with the camera, but her ascent is slowed by her inability to convince herself that Pres will return to her. The first half of the film thus ends with Julie symbolically falling as she rises, and Wyler diminishes her space even as she attempts, through an act of will, to dominate it.

The second part of the film takes place one year later. Pres has broken off his engagement to Julie and is working in the North. The yellow fever epidemic is ravaging the city, and Julie and her family are advised by Dr. Livingston to move to their countryside plantation, Halcyon, to escape the disease. The doctor also commiserates with Aunt Belle over Julie's melancholy and her secluded lifestyle since Pres's departure. Julie's mood is lifted, however, when she is told that Pres is returning to New Orleans on account of the yellow fever outbreak. Certain that they will be reconciled, she plans a homecoming party for him at Halcyon, where she envisions asking his forgiveness.

When Pres appears, he introduces his northern wife, Amy (Margaret Lindsay), to a stunned but gracious Aunt Belle, who excuses herself and anxiously goes to look for Julie. The film's second great set piece opens as Julie appears behind Pres in a stunning white dress. In what is arguably the most superbly acted scene of Davis's career, she seems determined but subdued while apologizing to Pres, who simply exclaims, “You're lovely.” Wyler shoots Julie over Pres's shoulder but not from his point of view, as if only the camera can frame and contain the overwhelming effect of her beauty. As Julie kneels in surrender at Pres's feet, the dress puddles around her, both accentuating her beauty and leaving her rooted to the floor, as she was earlier in the dressmaker's fitting room. Her image fills the frame as she begs his forgiveness and asks him to love her as she loves him. At that moment, Amy appears, and Pres walks away to introduce her to Julie as his wife. Wyler's close-ups of Julie as she attempts to regain her composure and absorb the news display a delicacy previously unrealized in Davis's acting.

The film's most important political scene follows, depicting the first formal dinner at Halcyon. The sequence is visually elegant and beautifully realized, reflecting the money and care that went into the production, including the magnificent clothing worn by the guests, the dinnerware on the table, the silver decanters, the crystal goblets, and the candelabras. The publicity for the film proudly proclaimed that the furniture and other properties were all antiques and that the four coal-oil lamps used in one scene were worth $1,000. Bette Davis offered some candlesticks and other heirlooms from her own family to decorate the set.

The scene opens with a high-angle shot, the camera hovering over the table to take in all the guests and the servants. The conversation begins with the claim that “William Lloyd Garrison is a fanatic!” and as this assertion is being discussed, Wyler's camera maintains its distance while showing the slaves who are fanning the diners and serving them. Wyler then cuts among the various guests while keeping his attention on Julie, Buck, and Pres. Julie is openly flirting with Buck, hoping to arouse Pres and incite an argument about politics, but Pres is not cooperating. Buck declares, “Cotton is king. Folks are bound to ship cotton downriver. So how can New Orleans keep from being the greatest city in America?” Pres counters, “In a war of commerce the North must win.” He goes on to shock the other guests by predicting, “It'll be a victory of machines over unskilled slave labor.” During Pres's remarks, Wyler pointedly includes Uncle Cato in the frame, either showing him pouring drinks or allowing his hand to enter the shot.