The Letter (1940)

November 22, 1940 (New York City), release date

Directed by William Wyler

Screenplay by Howard E. Koch

Based on the 1927 play The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham

Music by Max Steiner

Edited by George Amy, Warren Low

Cinematography by Tony Gaudio

Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie

Herbert Marshall as Robert Crosbie

James Stephenson as Howard Joyce

Frieda Inescort as Dorothy Joyce

Gale Sondergaard as Mrs. Hammond

Bruce Lester as John Withers

Elizabeth Earl as Adele Ainsworth

Cecil Kellaway as Prescott

Sen Yung as Ong Chi Seng

Doris Lloyd as Mrs. Cooper

Willie Fung as Chung Hi

Tetsu Komai as the Crosbies’ “head boy”

Distributed by Warner Bros.

 The Letter was released a week after I Wake up Screaming in 1940, but I find it much easier to think of the latter film as a film noir. I’m not a big fan of categories, and so I am quite happy to think of The Letter as belonging in both categories: avant noir and film noir. In some ways, it is pure melodrama. Bette Davis, as Leslie, emotes in a big way in some scenes, but she is a femme fatale; her husband is the one who is blinded by his love.

(This blog post about The Letter contains spoilers.)

The film opens with Leslie shooting a man on the steps leading from the verandah of her plantation home in Singapore. From that point onward, viewers witness her scheming and her willingness to continue breaking the law. In fact, Leslie’s character is clear to the Singaporean people who work for her and to viewers, but everyone else either believes she is above reproach or is cowed by her strong will. She is a liar, a cheat, and a murderer, and she shows no remorse for all that she has done and the heartache that she has caused. She will do anything to avoid going to prison for her crime, even if it means giving in to Mrs. Hammond’s blackmail scheme and using her lawyer, Howard Joyce, to help her. She doesn’t care about the consequences for anyone, including her lawyer, and the damage to her reputation.

The following exchange between Leslie and her lawyer reveals her true character:

• Leslie Crosbie: “You could get the letter.” [written by Leslie Crosbie and addressed to the murder victim, Mr. Hammond]

• Howard Joyce: “Do you think it’s so easy to do away with unwelcome evidence?”

• Leslie Crosbie: “Surely nothing would have been said to you if . . . if the owner weren’t quite prepared to sell it.”

• Howard Joyce: “That’s true. But I’m not prepared to buy it.”

• Leslie Crosbie: “It wouldn’t be your money. Robert has save—”

• Howard Joyce: “I wasn’t thinking of the money. I don’t know if you understand this, but I’ve always looked upon myself as an honest man. You’re asking me to do something which is not better than suborning a witness.”

Leslie’s lawyer refuses at first to go along with this scheme, but he changes his mind to help his friend Robert Crosbie, Leslie’s husband. Howard Joyce cares more about Robert’s well-being than his wife Leslie does.

Bette Davis gives a fantastic performance as Leslie Crosbie. It’s hard to believe, but I think even she is upstaged anytime Mrs. Hammond (played by Gale Sondergaard) is on-screen. Mrs. Hammond never utters a word of dialogue in The Letter, but her commanding screen presence and her facial expressions explain everything. When Mrs. Hammond sells the letter to Leslie and her lawyer, Howard Joyce, she throws it on the floor and forces Leslie to pick it up. And Leslie does pick it up. And says thank you, too!

The moon is an interesting motif woven throughout the story. It is lovely, of course, but it seemed to represent so many things. In the opening clip, it almost seems to remind Leslie Crosbie of her guilt at what she had just done in shooting Hammond. Later in the movie, it reminds her of her love and—again—what she has done to Hammond. Near the end of the film, she walks out into the moonlight, which seems to pull her with its gravitational force to meet her fate at the hands of Mrs. Hammond.

The sequence at the end of the film with the knife and the moonlight demonstrates Mrs. Hammond’s will once again. Leslie finds the knife on the terrace outside her bedroom door, and she recognizes it as a knife that she had admired in the shop in the China section just before buying the letter from Mrs. Hammond. To underscore the threat, the knife is taken away by the time that Leslie looks for it a second time. Mrs. Hammond and the moonlight cannot be denied: Leslie walks out into the moonlight, even though she seems well aware of what is in store for her.

I was really struck by the colonial way of life portrayed in The Letter, but all that gets turned on its head before the film is over. The plantation workers seem to know more about what’s going on than anyone else in the film. Howard Joyce’s legal assistant Ong Chi Seng is the one who brokers the deal about the letter in the first place. Are viewers supposed to believe that the people of Singapore can’t be trusted and will turn on the plantation owners? Are the plantation workers becoming accustomed to the owners’ habits and customs and use them against the owners to their own advantage? It’s hard to know what the filmmakers and 1940 audiences (now seventy-six years ago) would have felt about the plot details.

There’s no doubt that Leslie Crosbie and Mrs. Hammond are strong-willed women and both are the real stars of The Letter. For me, the real dilemma is how to categorize this film. I think I’m going to stick with my original idea: It’s both an avant noir and a film noir, with maybe a stronger emphasis on the first category. Whatever viewers decide, it’s a great film with two strong female leads who can match each other in their performances.