Queer Vision 20/20: Now, Voyager
Jun 11, 2015
Happy hour at 7pm, screening at 8pm
Co-presented with Three Dollar Bill Cinema
35mm print!
“Queer icon Bette Davis sparkles in this Warner Brother's weeper about transformation and forbidden love. Davis' frumpy Aunt Charlotte has a wee nervous collapse (and a unibrow) due to her mother's constant nagging and belittling. Luckily, hearty psychologist Claude Rains is visiting their Boston Back Bay mansion. He fixes her up at his woodsy retreat (weaving as therapy!) for WASPS so she further avoids aforementioned mother-hag by setting out on a South American cruise. Conveniently, Aunt Charlotte has lost a magical 20 pounds, plucked her brows and borrowed a friend's wicked elegant Orry-Kelly wardrobe. Miss Davis gives it to us hard on the gangplank in one of golden age Hollywood's greatest reveals. Later, she gives it more gently, one assumes, to the new forbidden love-of-her-life, the unhappily but permanently married Paul Henreid. He has a daughter with a unibrow. Things get complicated. A classic must see, I cry every time. ‘Don't let's ask for the moon, Jerry. We have the stars.’”
--Mark Mitchell