What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
USA, 1962, 35mm, 1.85, b&w, 132′
13.4. | 20:00 | Slovenian Cinematheque
directed by Robert Aldrich written by Lukas Heller (based on the novel by Henry Farrell) cinematography Ernest Haller music Frank De Vol editing Michael Luciano cast Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Anna Lee, Maidie Norman
Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) was a pampered vaudeville child star, while her younger sister Blanche (Joan Crawford), quiet and reserved, was pushed to the side. As the years pass, Blanche becomes a Hollywood star, while Jane has fallen into oblivion. Then one fateful night a mysterious accident cripples Blanche, binding her to a wheelchair. Paralyzed, she is left to the mercy of her sister and caretaker, who has turned into a nightmarish caricature of little Baby Jane, obsessed with her former fame and feelings of guilt for her sister’s misfortune.
With his modern Gothic masterpiece director Robert Aldrich returns to the critique of Hollywood stardom, previously condemned in The Big Knife (1955), a male variant of the story of an individual caught in the clutches of the entertainment industry. As two Hollywood giants and real life rivals, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, come head to head in this grim and grotesque swirl of sibling rivalry, it’s hard to discern on which side of the thin line between reality and fiction the electrified tension crackles more strongly.
“A variation of ‘who is the enemy’ theme found in his war films also occurs in this film which asks ‘who is the monster.’ Despite appearances, despite unexpected revelations, we can never take absolute sides with either Blanche or Jane. They are both villains, both victims. By the film’s end, to condemn either would be an act of supreme hypocrisy.”
– Edwin T. Arnold & Eugene I. Miller, The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich
“The staircase should be billed along with the stars in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). On a claustrophobic set, it dominates many shots, separating the upstairs captivity of the paraplegic Blanche from the downstairs lair of her deranged sister Jane. Although the two sisters live in a ‘mansion’ that allegedly once belonged to Valentino, it is jammed between nosy neighbors and seems to consist only of a living room, a kitchen, a hallway and a bedroom for each sister. In this hothouse a lifelong rivalry turns vicious, in one of Hollywood’s best gothic grotesqueries. /…/ At some point during this descent into madness, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? stops becoming a ‘camp classic,’ which is how it’s often described, and starts becoming the real thing, a psychological horror story. Davis tilts her performance toward Jane’s pathological ego, which is displayed in a macabre adult performance of ‘I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy.’”
– Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com
“Although the results heavily favor Davis (and she earns the credit), it should be recognized that the plot, of necessity, allows her to run unfettered through all the stages of oncoming insanity. Crawford gives a quiet, remarkably fine interpretation of the crippled Blanche, held in emotionally by the nature and temperament of the role. Physically confined to a wheelchair and bed through the picture, she has to act from the inside and has her best scenes (because she wisely underplays with Davis) with a maid and those she plays alone.”
– Variety, 31st of December 1961
