As part of my ongoing quest to watch all the movies used in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, last night I watched the 1946 Bette Davis film Deception. Shorter review: meh. And so I wasn't going to write about it. And yet, one thing kept bothering me. You see, at one point in the film, our bad guy, Claude Rains, monologues while stroking a cat. Straight up James Bond villain strokes a cat, twenty years before the Bond films even existed.[1] I wanted a screenshot of this cat-stroking, but the Internet has none. Which blows my mind. Wasn’t the Internet invented in order to catalogue cat pictures? And so, I decided that I must create one myself. Which meant teaching myself how to use DVD software, since I had no clue how one grabs screenshots from films and posts them online.
Fast forward several hours, and I give you—Claude Rains stroking a cat, evil villain style.
And since I’ve gone through all this trouble, I might as well talk about the rest of the film. Disclaimer: of the three main actors (Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains), I only care for Rains. If you are a Davis or Henreid fan, then you’ll most likely disagree with my mostly negative take on them. If, like me, you don’t much care for either actor, this isn’t the film to change your mind.
Deception opens with a reunion between Christine Radcliffe (Davis) and Karel Novak (Henreid). The couple met while studying music in Europe; Radcliffe was able to return to America, but Novak was trapped in Europe. The background to this story is incredibly vague. (I suppose the filmmakers assumed that 1946 audiences didn’t need a rehash of Nazi atrocities.) Novak never discusses what happened to him in Europe with Radcliffe; the closest the audience gets to an explanation is in the cat-stroking scene, when Alexander Hollenius (Rains) comments that Novak “wouldn’t perform for them” (or some such words) and that he’s lucky he still has his fingers.[2] All we need to know is that Novak is a delicate, broken man, prone to jealous fits alternating with absurd naivety. The opening reunion is all tears and chaste embraces, with Radcliffe saying that “I saw them kill you!” (or some such words). How this statement is possible is never explained. Really, we aren’t supposed to think too much about it. All we need to know is that, for whatever implausible reason, Bette Davis thought Paul Henreid was dead, and so moved on with her life. And now that her dead lover has returned, she’s got some ‘splaining to do.
Radcliffe takes Novak back to her NYC apartment, explaining as they walk how she is a struggling musician. Then they get to her place, which is—I kid you not—the greatest NYC apartment I have ever seen. (Apparently the design was modeled after Leonard Bernstein’s apartment.)
Novak is naturally suspicious, and accuses her (without directly saying it, of course) of being a hooker—even choking her at first. (This is the scene Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid uses, and since it occurs so early in the film, I thought about just turning it off here, as so far the film was a bit of a snoozefest.) Radcliffe naturally can’t tell her domestic abuser the truth—that she is now a famous composer’s kept woman—so we get the first of her many, many lies. She tells Novak that she takes in students in order to pay for her fantastic apartment with its opulent artwork and décor, and her fancy fur coats. (No wonder Warner Brothers lost money on this film—the sets and costumes are crazy ritzy.) The fact that Novak falls for such a terrible lie is either proof that the concentration camps destroyed his brain, or more likely, proof that the filmmakers don’t expect us to think too hard about this film. Any trauma Novak may suffer from is merely a convienent plot point, which surfaces when needed and disappears otherwise.
And this is my biggest complaint about the film—it is a melodrama where characters act as they do not for any realistic psychological reasons, but because the plot demands that they act in this way. The plot is especially jarring to contemporary audiences, since Bette Davis’s central dilemma—preventing her lover from finding out that she’s been unfaithful to him—makes little sense anymore. A simple “I thought you were dead, and so I moved on with my life; if you can’t accept that, then you obviously don’t love me” won’t suffice for a film which insists upon a very conservative view of female sexuality, even as it exploits that very sexuality in order to drive the plot.
What this film needed was more Claude Rains, who plays the manipulative, scenery-chewing composer. His first appearance, crashing the wedding reception of our not-so-perfect couple, is a hoot. Rains comes on like a cross between Richard Burton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Simon Callow in, well, anything.
Rains almost single-handedly turns this film from a flaccid melodrama into a camp classic. Deception is part of a long tradition of films about the creative class, and had the potential to be an ur- All About Eve. Sadly, only when Rains is on screen does the film come alive. I would say he steals every scene he’s in, except that makes it sound like he’s doing something wrong. To be fair, Rains’s character is a lot more fun than the PTSD cellist or the anxiety-plagued kept woman. After crashing the party, Hollenius discovers that his kept woman’s new husband is a world-class cellist; coincidentally, his just-finished work is a cello concerto. So he offers the part to Novak, partly because Novak is really, really, good, but mostly just so he can mess with him. (Rains and Davis have zero chemistry, which leads one to believe that Hollenius’s interest in Radcliffe was not sexual; rather, he just likes having people around to jump through his hoops. Rains’s campy demeanor and extensive collection of cravats and dressing gowns furthers this “no sexual interest” theory.) After his initial disappointment wears off, Hollenius seems delighted to have not one but two people to play mind-games with.
The middle section of the film is the most enjoyable, what with Hollenius finding more and more creative ways to fuck with the not-so-perfect couple. Radcliffe is convinced that Hollenius is going to destroy them, even at the expense of ruining the premiere of his new work. (The Netflix blurb states that “Christine’s efforts to conceal her actions are hampered by Hollenius’s insistence on sabotaging Novak’s career,” but this isn’t quite right. Christine thinks that this is so, but as we shall see, she is catastrophically mistaken.)
Long story short, Radcliffe keeps sneaking off to see Hollenius to beg him not to tell, and Hollenius keeps saying, “What, me? I wouldn’t do such a thing!” while flashing his best shit-eating grin. Then he messes with Novak some more. Finally, on the night of the big concert, Radcliffe shows up at Hollenius’s palatial brownstone and shoots him dead. (Yeah, yeah—spoiler alert. The DVD is obviously not concerned with keeping this little secret—check out the title screen:
Oh, and this final Rains scene also contains the best line of the film. When Bette Davis walks in the room, Rains is sitting at his dinner table, and he says “You look positively majestic. I’d better remain seated.” That’s how you do an erection joke, people!)
The film ends after the concert, with Radcliffe tearily confessing all to Novak. (Because why not? She just killed a man to keep her secret from him, so why not immediately spill it? Women, amiright?) We also learn explicitly what some of us suspected all along—Hollenius was never going to spill the beans. Spilling the beans would ruin his fun. Radcliffe has made the crucial mistake of thinking that this love triangle was all about her[3], that Hollenius was so distraught over losing her that he would sabotage his own concerto, and that if Novak found out he would sacrifice his career. But it was never about her at all, it was about the creative class, and how members of the creative class love power for its own sake, love manipulating people, and love being the center of attention, even negative attention, at all times. Hollenius has been fucking with them because that’s what directors composers do. If he didn’t have the “kept woman” stuff to use as blackmail, he would’ve just found something else. Hollenius plays mind games for the same supposed reason that they all do (to evoke emotions that lead to better performances) and for the actual reason that they all do (because he can). The real tragedy, the film tells us, is that Radcliffe, despite being a musician herself, never understood the masculine world of the creative class. So not only is Radcliffe a loose woman and a compulsive liar, but she’s an idiot to boot.
The film is categorized as a film noir, which doesn’t seem right to me. The form may be a film noir form—I really don’t know enough about the specifics of film noir composition to say. Deception is certainly a beautifully shot movie, with its noiry high ceilings and shadows everywhere. (Half the film seems to be Davis blowing out candles.) But the content doesn’t seem all that film noir to me. Davis is a femme, and she does fatale someone, but I wouldn’t call her a femme fatale. The movie certainly tries to take itself as seriously as a film noir, which is its biggest mistake. This film is all about overwrought musicians talking endlessly about their craft, making themselves out to be the most important people in the world. Only Rains seemed to know that this pomposity required acting of the highest camp in order to keep it from being insufferable.
[1] Which reminds me—someday I need to write a post about how James Bond is a film noir hero. More specifically, how Bond retains all the affectations of a film noir hero while removing the reason for those affectations; i.e. his outsider status. Bond is an establishment hero who co-opts the manners of a hard-boiled detective.
[2] Of course, this hint of violence must only be discussed between the two men—wouldn’t want to hurt Bette Davis’s delicate fee-fees.
[3] Radcliffe obviously never read Eve Sedgwick.
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