75 Years Later, Now, Voyager Remains a Poignant Depiction of Mental Illness
About 23 minutes into Now, Voyager comes one of the most resplendent transformations in all of cinema.
Charlotte Vale (played with trademark intensity and brutal grace by Bette Davis) begins the film as an archetypal spinster figure. Her eyebrows are unruly, clothes dowdy, and a definitive air of anxiety cloaks her. She comes across as an exposed nerve. But at that 23-minute mark, Charlotte is transformed. When the camera tilts upward to her luminescent face, half-shrouded by her hat, she's glamorous and beautiful in ways she hadn't been before. The change isn't just cosmetic. It's a reflection of an interior transformation that's still in progress - thanks to an extended stay in a sanitarium - from a mentally strained spinster to a woman charting her own path.