“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?
