Bette Davis: Underacting for William Wyler

Director William Wyler shows Bette Davis the best way to shoot somebody. Image: Pinterest

*Spoiler Alert*

They created the best opening scene in the history of cinema: On a moonlit night, on an isolated rubber plantation in Malay, a woman follows a man out of a house. As he stumbles down the stairs of the veranda, she fires at him repeatedly with a handgun, even after he’s dead.

Don’t mess with Bette. Image: Celebrities Off Mag

In films from this era, a moonlit night and an exotic location often suggest adventure and romance. But here, in The Letter (1940), director William Wyler and star Bette Davis give us cold-blooded murder.

The Letter is based on a story + play by W. Somerset Maugham. The plot is modelled on a real-life murder in Kuala Lumpur in 1911.

Davis plays an English woman accused of a murder which she claims was self defence. However, the discovery of an incriminating letter…