Tuesday, 23 February 2021

ALL-TIME CLASSIC MOVIE FAVOURITES – NOW, VOYAGER (1942)

 

“Now, Voyager” is a romantic drama, based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty and directed by Irving Rapper.

Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a spinster from a wealthy Boston family and following her father’s death she had her life controlled entirely by her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper), as a result her mental health suffered to the point that her sister, Lisa (Ilka Chase), arranges for Dr Jaquith (Claude Rains) to pay a house call on Charlotte.

Feeling despondent, she is convinced that she should spend some time in a sanatorium away from the influence of her mother and very soon Charlotte is transformed into a sophisticated confident woman, and such was the change in her that Lisa and Dr Jaquith arrange for her to go on a cruise to South America.

While on board she meets and begins a torrid affair with Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), a married architect.

Six months later, when she returns home to Boston, she forcefully confronts her mother with the terms of her independence, and an uneasy peace prevails between them until the day, after a brief argument, her mother has a heart attack and dies.

Charlotte inherits the vast Vale fortune but feels responsible for her mother's death, so she returns to the sanatorium where she befriends a depressed, young adolescent, named Tina (Janis Wilson), a girl rejected by her disturbed mother, but she soon discovers that Tina is the daughter of her former lover Jerry, and the pair soon bond, and in time Charlotte takes Tina home to with her to Boston, but is she destined to become too attached?

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