Review of The Letter (1940) by Afzal S — 14 Jun 2008

A Black & White film that can shock even the hardened sensibilities of those living in the 21st century. In the case of The Letter it's not, surprisingly, due to Bette Davis, who was the Meryl Streep of her time, but the little known English B-movie actor James Stephenson, who ironically steals the film he was nearly fired from with his scintillating performance as Howard Joyce, the high-minded lawyer brought low by his defence of Davis' manipulative English wife, Leslie Crosbie, accused of murdering a fellow colonial in British Malaya.

Indeed the film seems to lose a gear when the 'supporting' Stephenson is not on screen. It is as if director Wyler wished us (as in the audience) to identify with Joyce. At first, Wyler puts Stephenson on the margins and often in shadow, surveying the story and characters from a distance, rather like the audience. Then as Joyce encounters the infamous letter of the film's title, Wyler draws Stephenson out into the foreground as he reacts to the secrets it reveals, so that we further identify with Joyce, and suffer along with him. And Stephenson is vital as the conduit of this process that makes The Letter so special a film. His performance is so subtle and nuanced he seems strangely modern and leaves everyone around him, even the great Bette Davis, looking dated.

In fact, Stephenson is so vital to the film that his virtual non-appearance in the denouement is nearly fatal, and with Stephenson the film also discards its real sense of damage and despair, so that The Letter ends with meretricious melodrama. This is a shame because it is unusual for a 1940's studio-based Hollywood film to have such a sensual, poetic understanding of the conditions and effects of tropical colonial life. This goes, in a smaller way, for the natives as well, who are given more space and time than films of this era usually allow for, even if their depictions in The Letter remain quite coarse and condescending.