What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is a strange, strange film. Its storyline is at times meandering and repetitive. The
characters – even the normal ones – seem just a bit off. Its camera setups can
be peculiar, and its musical score is frenzied, hurtling between scary melodious. It’s a film where the opening credits don’t start until the
twelve-minute mark and the stars, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, don’t show up for
another eight.
However, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is a fascinating film to watch. Davis and
Crawford, who were real-life rivals, give performances filled with so much
latent hate that it’s almost palpable. In fact, Davis’ Oscar-nominated
performance as Jane is nothing short of brilliant. Once seen her song-and-dance
performance as she tries to recapture her youth is haunting. Crawford, as the
invalided Blanche may have less to do but she is nevertheless excellent as the sympathetic
sister.
Much like the old house
in which the two sisters reside, What
Ever Happened to Baby Jane feels dirty and old. It’s the kind of movie
where its unrelentingly grim atmosphere gets under your skin and is liable to
make the viewer feel uncomfortable. It’s a film which was ahead of its time,
and you’re left wondering if all of those strange choices enumerated above
might have been deliberate; an effort to make the movie feel even more otherworldly
and intangible. Though classified today as a horror film, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane might not elicit the kind of shocks
that its contemporary horror films did, but it is a evocative, creepy picture
nevertheless.
Today, one may recoil
at the out-and-out over-acting from both Davis and Crawford, and the sheer
weirdness of character actor Victor Buono is a curiosity in itself, but What Ever Happened to Baby Jane succeeds
wonderfully in the end. It’s a film that – despite its downbeat nature – you end
up enjoying.
And that may be the
strangest part of all.
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