The Little Foxes (1941)

In the 1900 South, a willful aristocrat (Bette Davis) watches while her two brothers (Charles Dingle, Carl Benton Reid recreating their stage performances) acquire great wealth due to the money left them by their father. But when a business deal with a Northern manufacturer (Russell Hicks) offers her a chance to acquire substantial wealth for herself, her sickly husband (Herbert Marshall) proves an impediment. Based on the stage play by Lillian Hellman (who wrote the screenplay), William Wyler whips up a tart taste of high drama impeccably directed and acted (except for Richard Carlson and Teresa Wright). It's no coincidence that Wyler directed some of Davis' best work (JEZEBEL, THE LETTER) but apparently there was so much friction between them here that they never worked again. Hellman's acidic melodrama has a grisly and destructive heroine in Regina Giddens and Davis' inhabits the role with a malignancy. I'm no fan of Teresa Wright who over does the girlishness and naivete but she's good in her final confrontational scene with Davis. The underscore is by Meredith Willson who would go on to write THE MUSIC MAN some 16 years later. With Dan Duryea, Jessica Grayson and Patricia Collinge, so touching as the fragile Birdie.