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Turner Classic Movies showed Bette Davis films all day yesterday, in remembrance of Davis' 100th birthday. One of the films shown was "The Letter." It's a good one. Davis is married to a man who adores her, the manager of a rubber plantation in Maylasia. Their friends are the other English plantation hoi polloi who socialize with each other. Davis fall in love with a man in their social circle, and they have an affair.
But her lover breaks off the affair and marries a Malay-Chinese woman. Davis writes him a letter asking him to come see her--while her husband is away. They argue--she can't give him up--and as he leaves, she shoots him in the back and kills him. Her lawyer, also a member of their social circle is going to use a self defense motive, because Davis says the man tried to rape her.
Then an emissary from the Malay-Chinese wife comes to the lawyer and says he has a letter Davis wrote to her murdered lover, and which if read in court will certainly prove her a liar. He offers to sell the letter to the lawyer--but only if Davis comes along. The wife wants to see Davis in person. Davis and her laywer go at night to the dwelling of the wife in the native quarter.
It was a dramatic scene when the Malay-Chinese wife appears behind a beaded curtain in a smoke filled room and enters to stand still as a statue above Davis. Wind chimes tinkle in the silence. She pulls the letter out of her sleeve, but as Davis reaches for it, the wife drops it to the floor, making Davis effectively bow before her to retrieve it. The wife's eyes glitter and her chest heaves as she observes Davis.
Davis is acquitted, her husband finds out the truth, but forgives her. But she confesses tearfully that she still loves her murdered lover. Tormented, she goes out into the garden behind her house, as a full moon shines through the cloudy night above the palm trees. The wife and another Malay have lain in wait and stab her. The movie ends with her body crumpled by the wall of her garden--the feeling is that justice has been served. Susil
