Silver Screen Standards: Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Silver Screen Standards: Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Although it’s more Gothic mystery than true horror, Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) fits right in for spooky movie season. With its ghosts and gruesome past, the decaying Southern mansion where the story takes place is a perfect setting for tales of terror, and in spite of its more worldly plot twists the film retains its haunted atmosphere throughout. Director Robert Aldrich meant the picture to serve as a second act to his previous successful pairing of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), but Crawford’s departure led to Davis’ good friend Olivia de Havilland stepping in to replace her. It’s certainly an unusual role for the elegant star, but she does a terrific job with it, joining a cast of true luminaries that includes Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Mary Astor, Cecil Kellaway, and a very young Bruce Dern. The talent pool in front of and behind the camera led to seven Oscar nominations for Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, including a nod for Moorehead as Best Supporting Actress, which proves this movie is more than a cult classic example of the “hagsploitation” genre that Aldrich helped to create. It mingles elements of earlier films like Gaslight (1944), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Baby Jane with the classic tropes of the female Gothic to craft a story that might not be very scary by our modern standards but is still provocative when it comes to the subjects of aging, grief, and long-kept secrets that fester in the dark.

Davis leads as the titular Charlotte, whose married lover John Mayhew (Bruce Dern) was violently dismembered in the summer house of Charlotte’s home many decades earlier. Haunted by visions of her dead beau and guilt about the circumstances of his demise, Charlotte has lived in the old mansion as a recluse ever since, with only her temperamental maid, Velma (Agnes Moorehead), for company. When the construction of a new bridge leads the state to claim eminent domain over her home, Charlotte invites her cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland) to return and help her, but Miriam has her own reasons for coming back to town after so many years away.

Traditional Gothic stories, with their roots in 18^th century British literature, tend to feature virginal young women as their heroines, stereotypically depicted fleeing along shadowy corridors in their long white nightgowns. Here we see that convention turned on its head with the introduction of the aged Charlotte as our heroine, still sporting her long girlish locks and youthful dresses but ravaged emotionally and physically by the years that have passed since her fateful discovery of her lover’s headless corpse. Although she can be volatile and even violent, Davis’ Charlotte is not interchangeable with Baby Jane Hudson; Charlotte, like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, is a tragic figure, trapped in the past by betrayal she has never been able to process. She wanders the mansion at night, still hearing the ghostly music of a song her lover wrote for her, her heart still as tender and longing as it was the night John Mayhew died. There’s a softness to Charlotte that we don’t see in Baby Jane, and it’s important to her character because we have to see her vulnerability in order to appreciate the peril she faces from her enemies. Far from being a “crazy old lady” who is meant to frighten or elicit cruel laughter, Charlotte is a victim of compounded schemes and jealousies whose sanity hangs in the balance as a result.

Complexity elevates each of the supporting characters, as well, from the pugnacious but fiercely loyal Velma to the dying Jewel Mayhew, played to great effect by Mary Astor in her last screen appearance. Joseph Cotten revels in the glib charm of the smalltown Southern doctor, while de Havilland deftly shifts between ladylike polish and seething resentment. Victor Buono only has a few scenes as Charlotte’s overbearing father, but he makes them count, and his domineering behavior helps us understand Charlotte’s difficult childhood as her father’s pet and possession. It’s Buono who most embodies the type of the Gothic villain, which leads both Charlotte and the viewer to certain conclusions (compare his character here to those played by Charles Laughton, Laird Cregar, and Sidney Greenstreet, all literal and figurative heavies). In lieu of a romantic hero or detective character we get Cecil Kellaway as the kindly but persistent insurance investigator, Harry Willis, who has come from England to pursue some lingering questions about the old Mayhew case. Willis, as an outsider, offers us exposition and uncovers information that other characters cannot, but he also directs our sympathy toward Charlotte, even when the strain of her situation causes her to lash out at him and others. A traditional Gothic thriller might see Harry Willis and Charlotte end the story with a wedding or a tight embrace, but again this tale eschews its genre conventions to provide an ambiguous ending more suited to the characters’ circumstances. These choices make Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte fascinating from start to finish, with plots and characters we think we know from their outlines but which then surprise us with their twists.

If you want to compare Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte with other Gothic classics, try Rebecca (1940), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Lodger (1944), Dragonwyck (1946), Bedlam (1946), The Spiral Staircase (1946), and The Woman in White (1948), or get really scary with The Haunting (1963). Bette Davis leaned into “hagsploitation” roles after the two Aldrich pictures with The Nanny (1965), Burnt Offerings (1976), The Watcher in the Woods (1980), and Wicked Stepmother (1989). Other examples of the genre – also known as “psycho-biddy” films or “Grande Dame Guignol” – include Lady in a Cage (1964) with Olivia de Havilland, Strait-Jacket (1964) and Berserk! (1967) with Joan Crawford, Die! Die! My Darling! (1967) with Tallulah Bankhead, and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1972) with Shelley Winters.

…

— Jennifer Garlen for Classic Movie Hub

Jennifer Garlen pens our monthly Silver Screen Standards column. You can read all of Jennifer’s Silver Screen Standards articles here.

Jennifer is a former college professor with a PhD in English Literature and a lifelong obsession with film. She writes about classic movies at her blog, Virtual Virago, and presents classic film programs for lifetime learning groups and retirement communities. She’s the author of Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching and its sequel, Beyond Casablanca II: 101 Classic Movies Worth Watching, and she is also the co-editor of two books about the works of Jim Henson.