for younger movie goers there was a bette davis before baby jane and sweet charlotte. and here she is. she really loses herself in this role and is almost unrecognizable in her scenes with claude raines. she turns into a butterfly, of course, and as in the little foxes, she sure knows how to wear a hat. she starts off mousey, emerges from her cacoon and falls for a married man, with a plain daughter. naturally she empathizes with the young girl, etc. it's pure hokum, of course, very forties and very good. her scenes with Gladys cooper are very intense. Gladys almost steals the movie. an unusual feat in a davis movie. bette is at the height of her powers here. queen of warner brothers and Hollywood.

Boston spinster (Bette Davis) blossoms under therapy and finds impossible romance.Both Bette Davis and Gladys Cooper received Oscar nominations for this film, and the score from Max Steiner actually won. I guess I did not see what the Academy saw. The score is fine, but the acting never really impressed me and the film itself is rather bland. It just did not hit me at all.The director, Irving Rapper, has not really distinguished himself beyond this film. His list of credits contains many films that only real film nerds would be familiar with. His later work "The Christine Jorgensen Story" may get some attention following the success of "The Danish Girl" (2015), though it is unlikely.

Well-made but dull."Now, Voyager" is essentially a movie-length soap opera. Has all the ingredients: over-stated melodrama, complex relationships, high society and their weird mores, idyllic settings, forbidden romances and a nagging, fascist mother. From the outset the movie just feels stuffy, and superficial.Good production though, despite the dialogue feeling so much like a play. Max Steiner won an Oscar for his musical score.The acting goes with the play/soap opera feel: over-stated emotions, exaggerated portrayals.

The definition of a Woman's Picture, as was. It's basically all that would be required nowadays too but sadly it usually best works with a sprinkling of soft porn to rope the ladies in, er as in Fifty Shades Of Grey so to speak. This expert film can even to hold the guys to the end, through the layers of soap and tripe to the climactic Give and Take annihilation of reason and the triumph of corn.Mentally repressed woman Bette Davis under mother Gladys Cooper's bony thumb first with the help of psychiatrist Claude Rains and then with married lover Paul Henreid eventually asserts her independence and blossoms as a person, and of course as a Woman which is more important. It's a masterclass in emotional cinema and tenuous logic – they're right when they say this couldn't be remade successfully: the down-to-earthy realism and intolerance to cigarette smoking nowadays and also the lack of seemingly untouchable stars, a Max Steiner to supply a suitably heart-stirring score, a dreamy gleamy nitrate black and white photography, and soft Warner Bros production values will all see to that.It's all rather wonderful to watch, and to wonder if you really are closer to your feminine side watching and digesting the labyrinthine plot. The cast, especially Davis are almost perfect in their melodrama. The money shots are just before and after Henreid (and Steiner) ask "Shall we have another cigarette on it?" – if you're not affected by the emotional conclusion and trite resolution of non sequiturs then you must surely have a screw in place!