#or if you think Victor doesn’t love Ernest and it was just clearer to you in the abridged?

[dathen]

@grimogretricks replying here since it’s shifting subject from the original post

I had heard a lot of fuss about that mentality before reading so kept an eye out for it, but Victor didn’t say everyone he loved was dead—he said that everyone who could bring happiness to his life was dead. It’s still a selfish way to describe it, but it wasn’t a statement that he didn’t love Ernest or that he forgot Ernest exists.

As one of Ernest’s caretakers and teachers, Victor would feel responsibility for making him happy rather than expecting the reverse. Recall how much responsibility for others’ moods is emphasized in the Frankenstein household—to the point that Alphonse scolded Victor for his depression, since it would bring the mood down for others, and it’s his duty to be cheerful and have a stiff upper lip for them, etc etc.

With that in mind, Victor would see his relationship to Ernest with just more guilt for the tragedy he blames himself for bringing to the family, and his own inability to care for him like he used to. The most he can do for him is leave and draw the murderer away, like he wished he’d done before marrying Elizabeth.

(also as a side note Victor’s always had “out of sight out of mind” tendencies with his relationships even before Every Mental Illness set in, like how he didn’t visit his family or even Henry while in university. I think Ernest is getting some of this by the end of the story, but don’t see it as a sign of Victor not loving him)

[lifejustgotawkward]

365 Day Movie Challenge (2017) - #78: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) - dir. Robert Aldrich

Just in time for the Ryan Murphy mini-series “Feud: Bette and Joan,” last week I watched the classic thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the film whose collaboration between stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford forms the basis for the new TV show. If you have enjoyed the work of Davis and Crawford from the 1930s, 40s and 50s but you are not familiar with their later contributions to horror cinema, Baby Jane is where it all began. The film isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely an experience worth having.

In 1917, Baby Jane Hudson (played by Julie Allred) is a popular vaudeville performer who charms audiences by singing such cute-but-creepy tunes as “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy.” (Aldrich never makes it clear whether Jane actually had an incestuous relationship with her father or if the obsession with Daddy’s love is all in her head, but perhaps author Henry Farrell made the nature of their bond clearer in the original Baby Jane novel.) Jane’s father lavishes all of his attention on his spoiled-rotten daughter, while her older sister Blanche (Gina Gillespie) stands at the sidelines with their mother (Anne Barton). Blanche vows that one day she’ll have her moment in the sun, and indeed that time arrives in the 1930s.

In 1935, Blanche Hudson is one of the biggest stars in Tinseltown, while Jane is also an actress who has a movie contract that she can’t get out of; there is a stipulation in Blanche’s studio contract that Jane has to have an active career too. Some insiders (including one played by Aldrich favorite Wesley Addy) assume that Blanche keeps Jane’s career afloat out of sisterly love, while others speculate that Jane (who is considered box office poison) is being punished by Blanche, forced to keep making failing films while Blanche’s success grows. Then a shocking tragedy happens after a late-night party: after driving to their shared home in the Hollywood Hills, Blanche is permanently injured while opening to the gates to the driveway. Someone – Jane, as everyone assumes – put their foot on the brakes and slammed the car forward into Blanche, turning her into a paraplegic. The studio hushes up the incident (out of loyalty to Blanche) so that Jane isn’t arrested, but Blanche and Jane’s careers are over.

Fast-forward to 1962. Jane (Bette Davis) and Blanche (Joan Crawford) are still living in their big, creepy house, with Blanche dependent on Jane for food and care since Blanche can’t leave her bedroom on the second floor. It is apparent that Jane has serious mental problems; she thinks she is still as famous as she was forty-five years earlier, still singing her old songs, playing with her “Baby Jane” dolls and even wearing the same braided blonde hair and heavily caked-on stage makeup. As the film progresses, we see Jane’s paranoia and cruelty toward Blanche intensify, including starving Blanche, taking away her phone and beating her when she crawls downstairs and tries to call a doctor. Jane eventually becomes so deluded that her homicidal capacity for violence exists simultaneously with a belief that she is a totally innocent child who would never harm a fly - a victim of other people’s strange and confusing aggressions.

Despite being impressively photographed by DP Ernest Haller, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has not aged nearly as well as the standard-setter in the psychological thriller genre from two years earlier, Psycho. I’m not even sure if Baby Jane is as good as Aldrich’s next horror-thriller, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, another vehicle starring Bette Davis that I thought was excellent (although I haven’t seen it in about ten years, so I’m due for another screening). It makes sense that the Academy granted Davis an Oscar nomination for her work in Baby Jane, a juicy part that she really sank her teeth into; I find it odd, however, that Victor Buono received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role as Edwin Flagg, the obviously gay pianist hired by Jane to accompany her in the show she dreams of putting on in Vegas, or wherever else she thinks a revival might happen. The Edwin character is interesting because the dynamic between him and his mother seems just as twisted as the one between Jane and Blanche, but ultimately Buono doesn’t have enough scenes, or important actions within the plot, to justify the actor receiving accolades for his work. I would have rather seen Maidie Norman win awards for her performance as the Hudsons’ housekeeper, Elvira, the only person in the world who truly cares about Blanche’s well-being.

In spite of some of my gripes, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is required viewing as a vital pop-cultural document. Besides its status as the landmark pairing of Davis and Crawford, the film also tells a compelling story about what might happen when celebrity clashes with mental illness and also with changing times and/or the unstable whims of the public (everyone has forgotten Baby Jane, but Blanche is remembered especially well thanks to a TV station that starts playing her classic 30s films, a fact that infuriates Jane). Davis and Crawford also had their own battles on- and off-set, fighting with each other but also generally dealing with the difficulties of maintaining their careers despite being women of a certain age. These overlapping complexities make Baby Jane exactly the sort of production that I would love to teach in a film history class, assuming that one day I get the opportunity.