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Mar 07, 2017messala2 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Willy Wyler at his best. Same with Miss Davis who was sleeping with Wyler at the time . I like to say "Ben-Hur" is my favorite film, but "The Letter" is my favorite William Wyler film. The first scene where Bette blows Mr. Hammond away is one of the best hooks for the first two minutes of any movie ever made. This was Bette's forty-sixth movie; that's astonishing in itself. What follows is a morality play, but one alive with dark humor and uncommon insight into colonial (white) superiority. James Stephenson as Bette's lawyer acquits himself expertly. He died soon after this Academy nominated performance. Wyler was famous for pioneer deep focus photography with cinematographer Gregg Toland that carried over even to Ben-Hur and the Children's Hour. Here he used Tony Gaudio with much the same expertise. The moon and the shadows she casts are the Greek chorus in this film. Maybe the library will hunt down a copy of The Liberation of L.B. Jones, Willy's last film, that made a awful lot of white people antsy.