Savant spun up this Goldwyn classic expecting to see another Bette Davis acting-fest, which admittedly can be very good experience. Even a weird soap like Mr. Skeffington is engaging when Davis is involved. The Little Foxes is not just a movie-star picture, but a director's movie. I'm finally rounding out seeing most of William Wyler's movies. With each one it is becoming more obvious that shot-for-shot he's a supremely superior director. His scenes are built around the drama instead of a strong personal style so he's not as distinctive as Hitchcock, Ford, or Hawks. But after you've seen a few, especially those films he made with Gregg Toland, his style jumps out immediately.

The prime principle in studio films was to make everything seamless, for cuts to be 'invisible' and for showoff technique to be shunned in the service of drawing the audience into the story. MGM achieved at least the first half of this theory in most of its movies, which unfortunately have a dull sameness - you can scarcely tell a Tay Garnett, from a Robert Z. Leonard, from a Victor Fleming. But Wyler's camera was always distinctive, his scenes blocked in perfectly judged masters, his camera firmly in the exact right place. He's visually more varied than Ford, and more fluid than Hawks. You get the idea that Wyler is expressing less his personal attitudes toward the material, than letting the material express itself. Just about the only Wyler-ism that I've seen crop up in every film, is the staging of crucial scenes around staircases of one kind or another. The Heiress, Come and Get It, The Desperate Hours and this picture have such strong 'stair' scenes that just the appearance of a staircase in something like Friendly Persuasion or The Best Years of Our Lives draws our attention immediately.

And Davis herself is something of a marvellous mystery. Her Regina Giddens character goes against every rule of Hollywood star casting: she's old, unyielding, unattractive, cold, hateful, and gives the ingenue a hard time too. She's icily charming in formal situations and an offensive snoot in every other personal interaction. Yet Davis makes her fascinatingly complex. A friend pointed out a mannerism she does (Inherited from the play? Invented?) of plucking a single errant hair out of her face and putting it back into place. She crosses her eyes slightly to see it, so for a second, she seems vulnerable and human, and then resumes her hard-woman act. It's the only thing she does that breaks the iceberg pattern. Besides a simpleton explanation that Regina 'can't stand to have a single hair out of place,' it's exact meaning eludes me.

The play itself is uncommonly thoughtful and profound. The Hubbards are opportunist vultures, but Hellman doesn't taint all of society with their greed. Their attempt to grab up the economic future with their cotton mill scheme, their readiness to become millionaires by exploiting the unemployed in their city, is an attitude now worn proudly by companies and millionaires, instead of being something to be ashamed of. Hellman's Regina remains interesting because of her determination, and because she's a woman fighting it out in a male-dominated arena. She's at the center of the clash between the values of the Hubbards and the Giddens. Surrounded by relatives who despise him and a wife who only wants the use of his money, Horace Giddens has already seen a fairer way of doing things, and digs in his heels against them. The struggle for control of the situation plays out beautifully.

MGM's DVD of The Little Foxes would seem to be a reasonable repressing of HBO video's earlier disc, and looks and sounds fine. The Toland photograpy is very well represented, with his deep-focus mastershots looking especially good on a large monitor. The only extra is X; alternate French and Spanish language tracks are included, but they're of a very poor quality.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Little Foxes rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: None
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: OCtober28, 2001