Beautifully and Finely: The Melodramatic Essence of a Dark Victory

Throughout the annals of human history, there is found evidence of the belief that the greatest form of heroism occurs when one sacrifices his or her life for the greater good. Of course, the very definition of a “greater good” varies from culture to culture, generation to generation. Religions preach the holiness of giving one’s life in the name of God, while societies praise their armed forces as they die for their countries. And in the early decades of American cinema, characters often gave up their lives for what society had deemed as a noble cause. While males found heroism through physical feats (like dying on the battlefield), women’s triumphs in film were more often than not psychological. Enter Dark Victory, Edmund Goulding’s successful 1939 melodrama, which star Bette Davis referred to as the “jewel in her crown” (Dark 2005). The film stands as an excellent example of the 30’s-era noble sacrifice, which can be seen in its female archetypes, social relevance, plot structure, and resemblance to the radically different 1955 Douglas Sirk film, All That Heaven Allows. Both films ask the central question, “what does an individual lose and gain when giving up independence for a noble victory?”

Perhaps the two most recognizable female archetypes seen in Dark Victory’s central character of Judith Traherne (Davis, who performs like a wildfire unleashed) are that of the tragic heroine and the noble sufferer. Like Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) in All That Heaven Allows, Judith lives a life of lonely independent isolation in a neighborhood of wealth that is only remedied by her devotion to an attractive male (in this case, Dr. Frederick Steele, played by George Brent) in a peaceful, middle-class country house. Typical of a vintage Davis character, Judith single-handedly moves her own redemption story along with her masculine walk, line delivery that rattles like gunfire, and fierce eyes that are always a second away from bulging out of their sockets. In a sense, Judith becomes the female version of the male warriors found in mythos stories like The Lord of the Rings, in which male creatures valiantly risk death while battling to preserve the moralistic ideals of their society (those who merely serve themselves die). Judith is no less heroic by the film’s end, where near death, she refuses to interfere with her husband’s medical work duties. She even solves the film’s love triangle—a relationship that has developed between herself, Steele, and her friend Ann—by selflessly giving her husband to Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald). By this point, her speech pattern has slowed and been peppered with polite platitudes, cementing her transition from the spoiled socialite she was before, when she dragged Dr. Steele away from work in Maine. Like the male warriors of folklore, Judith finds heroism in her servitude, which is threatened only the sin of independence.

There is a tendency to interpret Dark Victory’s themes of sacrifice and impending doom as a reaction to WWII, which would be possible if the film hadn’t been released in 1939 (nearly two years before Pearl Harbor). Studio executives were actually fearful that the film’s morbid plot wouldn’t connect with audiences. Thus Judith’s death from brain cancer was downplayed immensely by the ad campaign, which drew in its target female audience with upbeat trailers, essay and designing contests, and even makeup charts (Dick 16). Victory was first and foremost a star vehicle for Davis, who had just won two Oscars. Released nearly a decade after the stock market crash of October 1929, America was still feeling the pangs of the Great Depression, which despite FDR’s New Deal, continued all the way up until the war. As men attempted to find work, women became the majority of the ticket-buyers (a trend that only increased during wartime). Women had already responded to the archetype Davis had created along with Joan Crawford: the “Depression-era girl who struggles to the top.” Victory’s success may be due to the fact that it saddled Davis’s “take charge” persona with a more sobering examination of the moral art of dying, which was not at all alien to a society reeling from starvation and unemployment. While the film did hold rigidly to the 1930’s class separation (by portraying Davis’s flirtation with a stable-hand as an act of unfortunate act of desperation), it did, however, depict wealth (namely Judith’s) as an ineffective insulator. This cheered the economically poor masses by painting middle-class life (namely Dr. Steele’s Vermont farm) as the healthy ideal. Ironically, while the film dramatized the horror of brain cancer, it also did the tobacco industry a favor by allowing their idolized stars to smoke in most scenes.

From Gone with the Wind to The Rains Came, 1939 overflowed with melodramas about stubbornly self-absorbed women who find redemption by either losing love or their own lives in order to preserve some form of “greater good”. For a woman like Judith, as film analyst Pam Cook observes, her “ill body becomes an enigma, a riddle to be read for its symptoms rather than an object of erotic contemplation.” Her desires for love and life are depicted as fantasy, while her point-of-view is usually limited in comparison to that of the spectator’s (Landy 254). In pure melodramatic fashion, this leads to much dramatic irony between Judith (who is blissfully unaware of her fatal illness) and her close friends (who are aware of her state, but are too afraid to inform her of it). Yet since this is a Davis film, the irony flips (when Judith secretly discovers her fate), leading to a classic confrontation in a restaurant, and the uttering of that immortal line, “I think I’ll have a large helping of prognosis negative!” The overall economy of early Hollywood storytelling allows the film to up the ante with dramatic complications in a timely manner (such as Judith’s headaches, which hint at her future early on). While several of these plot points stretch probability (such as when Dr. Steele can’t tell that his own wife is blind), Dark Victory proves its success as a melodrama by making audiences buy its silly story by emphasizing its emotionally compelling symbolism (Dr. Steel could merely be blindsided by Judith’s newfound purity of moral vision).
As stated previously, Dark Victory shares several traits with All That Heaven Allows, mainly because both films provide their wealthy female protagonists with an irrevocable decision between either living alone or dedicating their lives to their male lover. Yet while Judith finds her own personal heaven in Vermont, Cary (in Heaven) finds herself in yet another personal prison, by devoting herself to her paralyzed lover. The flowers Judith plants before her death (meant to symbolize new life) differ greatly with the vegetation seen in Heaven, which Sirk himself said were meant to “fill the homes with a funeral air.” (Stern 116) While Goulding’s film optimistically suggests that there is indeed a path to salvation, Sirk argues that any form of servitude makes a person unable to reach their full individual potential (thus making ‘victory’ impossible).

In the end, however, Judith Traherne merely wants to take her doctor’s advice and die “beautifully and finely.” To acquire an ideal death in a Hollywood melodrama, one must serve something other than oneself (Ann and Steele), find peace in a place that is not out of the audience’s reach (the middle-class), and never emerge victorious before a series of silly yet symbolic complications get in the way (to keep the audience’s hankies firmly in their clutches). Yes, Sirk may have argued that Judith’s final moments of servitude are less than victorious. Yet the important thing is that by using her last remaining months to sacrifice her independence for nobility, Judith found inner peace. And nothing could be more beautiful or fine that that.


Bibliography:

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.

Dick, Bernard F. Dark Victory. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin
Press, Ltd., 1981.

Dirks, Tim. Dark Victory. http://www.filmsite.org/dark.html. 2005.

Landy, Marcia. Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Melodrama. Detroit,
Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1991.

Stern, Michael. Douglas Sirk. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers, 1979.

Dark Victory. Dir. Edmund Goulding. Perf. Bette Davis, George Brent, and GeraldineFitzgerald. Commentary: Paul Clinton and James Ursini. Warner: 2005.