Smackdown 1940: Barbara O'Neil, All This and Heaven Too

Even before O'Neil's Duchesse du Praslin dies, she haunts this movie.

Bette Davis, as the governess Henriette, is greeted outside the door of the Praslin estate by the old servant Pierre, who makes it clear that she'd have to be nuts to work here. "I did not bring evil into this home," Henriette will say repeatedly in the movie's final act, and Pierre knows how right she is.

As is true of most evil spirits, we hear the Duchesse before we see her; she's scolding her husband the Duke (Charles Boyer) for his repeated "humiliations" of her. It's not clear what she means by that, but it is instantly clear that the Duchesse is desperate for attention and affection, even as she's incapable of giving those things to others. She is an apathetic mother, popping bonbons as the Duke interviews the new governess, but quick to take offense when the children greet their father and the new governess before acknowledging her.

But when they do come to her, she really can't be bothered. Four-year-old Reynald brings her a flower, and she dismisses him with an utterly bored "thank you" (and just look at how much she communicates in how she handles that flower, bouncing it in the air with disdain).

The Duchesse is both the villain and the comic relief of the movie -- and as much as I enjoyed this old-fashioned weepie, the comic relief was certainly needed -- and O'Neil does a marvelous job of combining the two. Her dialogue is more melodramatic than anyone else's; her every line seems to end in an exclamation point. "God will visit His revenge on this house!" "You delight in torturing me, as one day, Heaven willing, I will torture you!" Of frail little Reynald: "He will always bear the marks of my suffering!"

She's also got sharp comic timing. Listen to how crisply she switches from phony solicitude to utter loathing when she says to her husband, "Poor Mademoiselle Deluzy must have suffered.... Has she suffered?"

But as over-the-top as the Duchesse is, O'Neil always keeps her within the movie's emotional reality (there are moments, I grant you, when she only just keeps that control). And there are lovely subtleties in her facial expressions -- a smug, satisfied smile at the end of the party montage; eyes that flash with mad jealousy.

It's a performance that wouldn't work at all today, when it would seem ridiculously flamboyant against modern naturalistic acting. But when the emotional center of the movie is as big and broad as it is here, the boundaries are also pushed farther out, and O'Neil takes full advantage of those boundaries; by being just a tiny bit bigger and, in some way, sillier than everyone else, she makes the Duchesse the most memorable character in the movie. It may look like loopy overacting to modern eyes, but it's a very precise performance, and it's great fun to watch.