What Ever Happened to
Baby Jane? (1962) – Director Robert Aldrich united famous feudsters Bette
Davis and Joan Crawford in this creepy camp classic that finds former child
star Baby Jane Hudson (Davis) barely playing caretaker for her crippled sister
Blanche (Crawford), whose film career far outshined Jane’s. Davis was justly
nominated for (and cruelly robbed of) that year’s Best Actress award at the
Oscars; she goes for broke as the increasingly deranged Baby Jane, serving up
dead rats and tumblers of scotch while lamenting her ignominy with
skin-crawlingly awkward serenades to a full-length mirror. Crawford has the
more restrained performance, the plot permitting her much less room to go mad,
though she’s particularly interesting to watch on a second viewing once you
know the Hitchcockian twist the film conceals until its final sequence. This is
Aldrich at his best Hitchcock level – he would later go on to direct the
stellar proto-Suicide Squad film The Dirty Dozen – filmed in black and white
to accentuate the garish shadows and angles of the Hudson mansion and of the
caked-on makeup Baby Jane wears to disguise her many faults and hang-ups.
Victor Buono has what amounts to a cameo appearance as a shiftless pianist who
stumbles into Baby Jane’s web; when he’s sober, Buono’s character dramatizes on
his face so many of the awkward cringes the audience is feeling as Baby Jane
revives her old vaudeville act (revives, insofar as any life can be injected
into that long-dead performance). But the film is rightly more interested in
Baby Jane and Blanche and the ways these two sisters make each other miserable,
and in how much campy fun can be derived from watching two golden-era
performers nibble on the decaying scenery.That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!
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