THRILL SCALE 1-10
7.5
HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?
Yes, but only once a long time ago, compared to the many times I've seen Baby Jane
BEST SEQUENCE
Just like in Baby Jane, the ending is pretty satisfying
BEST LINE
"Chop chop, sweet Charlotte,
Chop chop till he's dead.
Chop chop, sweet Charlotte,
Chop off his hand and head"
- sung over the opening credits
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE
82%
ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS
None available
IMDB SYNOPSIS
"An aging, reclusive Southern belle plagued by a horrifying family secret descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative."
DIRECTOR
Robert Aldrich
MAIN CAST
Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead
THOUGHTS
- After the success of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, they decided to see if they could do it again. The initial plan was to reunite director Robert Aldrich and his stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, not to mention a few of the supporting cast (including Victor Buono, who was nominated for an Oscar for Baby Jane). Sweet Charlotte also had the same screenwriter, Lukas Heller, and it was even based on an unpublished short story by Henry Farrell, the same author whose novel was the source material for Baby Jane. Spiritual sequels don't come much more connected than that, which (for me, at least) makes it a real shame that we didn't get to see the version with Joan Crawford going head-to-head with Bette Davis once more
- Crawford officially signed on originally, but shortly into the movie's production she got sick and was replaced with Olivia de Havilland. Now, it's honestly a little hard to parse what actually happened here. Was Crawford feigning illness to stick it to Aldrich and Davis? Was she just trying to get out of the movie after a rocky start to filming? Or, as she and her doctors claimed, was she legitimately sick, only to then get fired from the role? Who's to say. Regardless, the interesting hypothetical about what we would have gotten with Davis and Crawford would have been the reversal of roles when comparing Sweet Charlotte with Baby Jane
- Both movies feature the Bette Davis character steadily growing more and more insane, but while in Baby Jane she's the aggressor whose abuse of her sister gets more intense as her mental state diminishes, in Sweet Charlotte she's the victim being pushed over the brink by factors outside of her control. Don't be mistaken, Davis's portrayal of Charlotte still provides plenty of opportunities for her to get ornery, and her acting is as hammy as ever, but to have seen Davis as the tormentee and Crawford as the tormentor would have been a really nice inversion for Baby Jane fans
- It is worth acknowledging that I find Davis's performance as Jane to be more fun to watch than her performance as Charlotte. I don't fault the filmmakers for wanting to change things up and not just make the same movie, but Davis had a little bit more room for those really wild swings when she played the villain instead of the protagonist
- Pretty good supporting cast, including two people we've talked about before, Olivia de Havilland (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Joseph Cotten (a few movies so far, but most prominently in The Third Man). There's also an almost unrecognizably young Bruce Dern. Agnes Moorehead was the only person from this movie to get an acting Oscar nomination, but good God, she's chewing even more scenery than Bette Davis!
- The violence is actually pretty graphic for the time, including shots of chopped off hands and decapitated heads
- Just like in Baby Jane, there's some creepily effective use of music. The best line up above is taken from a song sung by kids over the opening credits, which is actually a schoolyard parody of the song "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," which connects to the plot of the movie, and is, of course, where they got the title. It was also the recipient of an Oscar nomination for Best Song
- Finally, in between watching Baby Jane and Sweet Charlotte, I did get the chance to watch an older Bette Davis movie, All About Eve. A classic movie that I probably should have seen already, it's a pretty good companion to these two, and a good opportunity to see a younger, more restrained Bette Davis (while still not totally devoid of her particular brand of hamminess)
Up next: Another classic that I probably should have seen by now, and the earliest Kubrick movie of his five on the list, Spartacus from 1960
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