I've been looking for better Bette Davis films - she may be my favorite Hollywood actress, and yet it's unfortunate that too much of the time she's carrying too much of the load, elevating a mediocre production into something worth seeing if not a masterpiece.
Marked Woman was available on DVD before, individually and also as one part of a few box sets, but it's now a WAC title.
Right out of the gate, Davis delivers a powerhouse performance, but I wasn't sure if the rest of
Marked Woman would amount to anything. It takes a while, but the momentum does indeed build, and it finally takes off with the first court room scenes. Robert Rossen is credited with the script, and there are moments that recall some of his later films, particular his best film
The Hustler which has a similarly harrowing moment...
...where the lead character is brutally beaten.
And Bogart is just terrific as the assistant D.A.
High Sierra and
The Maltese Falcon were four years away, but the legendary persona established in those films is actually already here - it's the perfect complement for Davis. (FWIW, Bogart actually met one of his wives in this film, though it wasn't a happy marriage - the press called them "the Battling Bogarts.")
More than any film I've seen so far, you really see why Davis has been called a "force of nature" - physically small in stature and playing the role of a marginalized woman, she nevertheless commands every bit of the screen with the type of focused intensity Cagney employed to push his early vehicles forward. Just marvelous.
