{"id":18227,"date":"2012-06-04T10:30:34","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T15:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=18227"},"modified":"2019-07-02T05:01:22","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T10:01:22","slug":"bette-davis-eyelids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2012\/06\/04\/bette-davis-eyelids\/","title":{"rendered":"Bette Davis eyelids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bette Davis, ca. 1950; caricaturist unknown. From Miguel Andrade’s site.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

Janet Frobisher, mystery writer, has murdered her husband. Naturally, she telephones her lover and asks him to come over. But before he arrives, Janet finds that the runaway George Bates has come calling. George has been her husband\u2019s partner in bank fraud, and now they\u2019ve gone further. They robbed the bank at gunpoint, and a policeman was shot. George faces Janet and demands to know where her husband is.<\/p>\n

Nobody is likely to call Another Man\u2019s Poison<\/em> (1952) a masterpiece, or an undiscovered auteur gem. (Irving Rapper has, however, signed some better-than-average pictures.) Like many ordinary movies, though, it can tell us some interesting things about cinema if we look closely. Especially when that look takes in Bette Davis.<\/p>\n

I had to restrain myself from adding a soundtrack link for this entry. You know the one. The earworm may be at work already. But having you listen while you read would probably only distract from my point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eyeball to eyeball<\/strong><\/p>\n

That point is one I\u2019ve made before. We humans are very good at watching each others\u2019 eyes. Evolutionary psychologists debate how that skill might have evolved, but there\u2019s little doubt that we can \u201cmind-read\u201d on the basis of others\u2019 gaze direction and other eye-related cues. Of all the arts, cinema probably has the most powerful ability to galvanize and channel our reactions solely through the way people use their eyes.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s an eye? I argued in an earlier entry on The Social Network<\/em><\/a> that eyeballs as such aren\u2019t very expressive, despite poets\u2019 claims to see the soul there. Dilations are about all you get. The real expressive work gets done by gaze direction, the brows, and the lids. Blinks help too<\/a>. Lately, watching films from the 1940s and early 1950s for a book I\u2019m planning, I was struck by how the great divas of that era used their eyes.<\/p>\n

Consider for example Barbara Stanwyck in the Mitchell Leisen weeper No Man of Her Own<\/em><\/a> (1951). Helen Ferguson has innocently assumed the identity of the dead daughter-in-law of a wealthy family, and she\u2019s torn between revealing her lie and protecting her baby. So in most scenes her look is intent and direct. She uses the screen actor\u2019s usual tactics of steady gaze and motivated blinks, with brows and mouth carrying the emotional impact (below, shocked anxiety; then distress).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Even when she\u2019s thinking, her eyeline remains steady and she doesn\u2019t play much with her eyelids.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What about when Stanwyck is much less innocent, as in Double Indemnity<\/em><\/a> (1944)? Devious as she is, Phyllis Dietrichson meets Walter Neff\u2019s eyes squarely. \u201cThere\u2019s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When Phillis isn\u2019t looking straight at Neff, it\u2019s when she\u2019s pretending to be demure and concerned about her husband\u2019s safety\u2014and acting as coy as Brigid O\u2019Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon<\/em><\/a>. But once Neff sees through her effort to insure her husband, she glares at him unwaveringly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of Stanwyck\u2019s star persona is the bold woman who responds frankly to whatever is put before her. When it comes to evasive maneuvers, though, there\u2019s Bette.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Putting a lid on it<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Publicity photo for Jezebel<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Her eyes are big and can be quite round, of course. They also sit remarkably centrally on her face, thanks to her high forehead; this quality is accentuated when her hair is brushed back, as it often is. What especially interests me today, though, is her eyelids.\u00a0If Bette rolls her eyes at us in those Warners publicity shots, she can also create hooded eyes that suggest she\u2019s harboring secrets.<\/p>\n

Bette has remarkable control of those eyelids; she can close them to a very exact degree. In performance, the slight drooping of the upper lid, combined with a small shift in her gaze and a turn of her head, can shade the line or word she speaks. Add that sullen mouth and her vocal tone and rhythm, and you get a nuanced suite of micro-emotions.<\/p>\n

Take the moment in Another Man\u2019s Poison<\/em> after Janet Frobisher tells George that she\u2019s killed her husband. She rushes into a two shot favoring her as George says: \u201cYou could\u2019ve divorced him.\u201d Her reaction is an eye-flick, evading his look but still radiating defiance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now begins a series of micro-movements that shift Janet\u2019s reaction away from George. She explains how her husband kept her tied to him. \u201cHe\/ was\/clever\u201d: On each word, her expression, eyelines, and eyelids change minutely. Then she pauses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cHe saw\/ to that\/ too\u201d gets mapped onto three more changes, with traces of a smirk accompanying an eye-shift on the word \u201ctoo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But Janet isn\u2019t looking straight at George yet. She\u2019s got more to say by way of explaining why divorce wouldn\u2019t work: She and her husband continued to have sex. She puts it more indirectly: \u201cHe paid me\u201d\u2014pause when she lifts her eyes to look back at George\u2014\u201cvisits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This instant of looking sharply back at George, as she had at the start of the shot, drives the point home and becomes the climax of this phase of the exchange. Eyelids, brows, chin, mouth, and gaze have all cooperated in creating an emotional detour away from and back to her questioner. Bette\u2019s tiny side-glances show us a woman thinking and reacting to what she\u2019s thinking, relishing what she\u2019s going to say and then watching the effect of what she says. It all takes eight seconds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be the wide-eyed ingenue<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see the two stars\u2019 technique operating very early in their careers. Stanwyck is the name star of So Big!<\/em> (1932) and Davis is fifth-billed. Above, we find Stanwyck, playing the nobly suffering mother Selina, using her direct-gaze strategy (though as she ages, the eyes get a little pinched). By contrast, we have Davis as the saucy young illustrator Dallas O\u2019Mara. Selina\u2019s son Dirk asks Dallas why she doesn\u2019t love him. When she answers, William Wellman\u2019s staging gives Davis a little aria of face-time at the piano.<\/p>\n

Dallas explains that she\u2019s attracted to men who have confronted the rough side of life. \u00a0I can provide only excerpts of what is a forty-second shot, full of shifts of head position, facial expressions, and eye movements, complete with finely calibrated eyelid work. The passage reminds us that Davis\u2019 dynamic expressions and eye movements are often motivated by her playing characters full of jittery pep, talking fast and thinking faster. She will even deliver phrases with her eyes closed\u2014here, speaking of men with hands scarred from work and struggle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As she says, \u201cYou haven\u2019t a mark on you, Dirk,\u201d Dallas reaches across to grip his forearm. A new phase of the scene begins, but still with the suite of slight head turns and eyelid action.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dallas says that if he\u2019d kept on as an architect instead of taking refuge in a safe business job, his face would show it. As in Another Man\u2019s Poison<\/em>, Davis concludes her monologue by turning to face the man and deliver the final line directly. From early in the scene, however, Dirk has turned his face aside in shame.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Where would his marks of character show? \u201cIn your eyes, in your whole being.\u201d She peers up at him, her face closer than at any other point in the scene, and her hand lifts from his arm to accentuate her frank but brutal blow to his pride.<\/p>\n

Which makes our last view of her all the more arresting. In the final scene, Dallas meets Dirk\u2019s mother and imagines her as an ideal subject for a portrait. Now the flighty young artist is riveted on the steady, serene gaze of the older woman.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this climax, Dallas becomes what Dirk has called her\u2014\u201ca wide-eyed ingenue\u201d\u2014but in her rapt admiration she proves herself worthy to be Selina\u2019s daughter-in-law.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bette, eyeballing us<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that we know the role Bette\u2019s upper eyelids play, we can appreciate other moments when she milks their effects virtuosically. Go back to Another Man\u2019s Poison<\/em>. George tells Janet that he has the weapon used in the bank robbery\u2014the pistol that bears her husband\u2019s fingerprints. As George starts his line, she\u2019s taking a drink in the foreground. Lifting the glass, she tips her head back too so that her eyes are just visible under her lids\u2014and they\u2019re looking out at us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

George says, \u201cI\u2019ve got the gun.\u201d Janet lowers the glass, but she keeps it poised. Now her lids and eyelines present her reaction to George\u2019s information that the pistol bears the husband\u2019s fingerprints. You see her thinking about evasive action.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This moment in effect spotlights Davis\u2019 use of her eyes; she\u2019s frozen in place, and they\u2019re the only things that move.<\/p>\n

Early in the film, we\u2019re given a sort of primer that trains us to watch Janet\/ Bette\u2019s eyelids. The first scene shows Janet making her call to her lover from a phone booth. It\u2019s staged with her in profile, so that her brows and mouth are relatively unmoving and the eyelids, centered in the frame, become quite salient. I won\u2019t try to follow all their tiny fluctuations, in coordination with the chin\u2019s angle and the mouth, but these samples should give you the flavor. (Note the very slight difference between the first and the third image, and the second and the fourth).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A more frontal view of La Davis would have been a more characteristic star introduction, but it\u2019s as if the film is saving her full-face firepower for later scenes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s other evidence that Bette was considered to be able to hold a scene by an eyelash. In Payment on Demand<\/em><\/a> (1951),\u00a0flashbacks from Joyce and David\u2019s miserable marriage take us to happier days. One scene shows the couple embracing on a hospital bed after Joyce has given birth to their second child.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Joyce learns of David\u2019s plans to move out of town, but she resists and sits upright. This brings her distraught reaction home to us with the now familiar coordination of eyeline, eyebrows, and eyelids with the mouth and shakes of the head\u2014another suite of micro-behaviors I can merely sample here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But then Joyce relaxes and falls back, hiding her face as the camera cranes up slightly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director Curtis Bernhardt has reframed the shot so that as Joyce curls up on the pillow, one eye peeps out. We don\u2019t see her mouth replying to David\u2019s lines, but we get the customary fractional eyelid changes, as in the phone booth scene above.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eventually Davis moves her shoulder and reveals Joyce\u2019s mouth, but for several seconds we\u2019ve been obliged to follow the small movements of her lids as the only clue to her calming down\u2014and getting her way with David. This is, needless to say, all done without a close-up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hollywood cinema is a highly formal cinema, as conventional in some ways as commedia dell\u2019arte<\/em>. Yet that doesn\u2019t mean it must trade only in gross effects. Admittedly, much of today\u2019s cinema has sacrificed nuance for brute force. All the better, then, that returning to even minor films from the studio era can remind us of how many opportunities the medium affords.<\/p>\n

Bette Davis isn\u2019t the only virtuoso performer, of course, and many of her contemporaries show the same kind of gifts, sometimes put to different ends. She offers a convenient illustration of how film actors can cultivate meticulous control over facial regions we don\u2019t normally think about. She makes up for being short and rather slight by playing her face like a chamber ensemble, with every \u201cvoice,\u201d eyelids included, contributing to the restless dramatic flow.<\/p>\n

Okay, I know: The song was running through your head all the way through. You deserve a break. Go ahead, but you might as well\u00a0watch something too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

On the evolutionary implications of our eye behavior, see Michael Tomasello et al., Why We Cooperate<\/a><\/em> (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). Tomasello argues that the need for social cooperation favored signals of shared attention; to work together, we need to notice things that other people are looking at. He also points out:<\/p>\n

All 200-plus species of nonhuman primates have basically dark eyes, with the sclera\u2014commonly called the \u201cwhite of the eye\u201d\u2014barely visible. The sclera of humans (i.e., the visible part) is about thee times larger, making the direction of human gaze much more easily detectable by others. A recent experiment showed that in following the gaze direction of others, chimpanzees rely almost exclusively on head direction\u2014they follow an experimenter\u2019s head direction up even if the experimenter\u2019s eyes are closed\u2014whereas human infants rely mainly on eye direction\u2014they follow an experimenter\u2019s eyes, even if the head stays stationary<\/strong> (pp. 75-76).<\/p>\n

But tracking my eye direction helps you, not me; how could it have evolved? Tomasello hypothesizes that making eye direction salient developed in a cooperative social environment. It\u2019s part of social intelligence, in which mind-reading works to everyone\u2019s benefit in shared tasks.<\/p>\n

A vast resource on all things Bette is this site<\/a>. Some perceptive remarks on her acting style are at Uncle Eddie\u2019s Theory Corner<\/a>. Jim Emerson offers an interview <\/a>with Miss Davis in a smoke-filled room, while Roger Ebert presents an admiring appreciation<\/a> of All About Eve<\/em>.<\/p>\n

An earlier blog entry here<\/a> reflects on the performance of another sacred diva of the period, Joan Crawford. If you\u2019re interested in a wider account that fits such matters into a broader theoretical perspective, including folk psychology, try this essay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bette Davis, ca. 1950; caricaturist unknown. From Miguel Andrade’s site. DB here: Janet Frobisher, mystery writer, has murdered her husband. Naturally, she telephones her lover and asks him to come over. But before he arrives, Janet finds that the runaway George Bates has come calling. George has been her husband\u2019s partner in bank fraud, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,159,65,79,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1940s-hollywood","category-actors","category-film-technique-performance","category-film-theory-cognitivism","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18227"}],"version-history":[{"count":67,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42280,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18227\/revisions\/42280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}