Off Topic: Now, Voyager

Now, Voyager (1942)

Category: I first came across Now, Voyager during my old movie phase as a teenager.

My thoughts: I love this movie, but it’s a bit melodramatic, especially toward the end. Now, Voyager has several elements: mother/daughter conflict, star-crossed lovers, and a glimpse into psychiatry in the early 1940s. This movie is the story of Charlotte Vale (played by Bette Davis), whose crotchety mother is domineering to the point of tyranny. As a result, Charlotte is incredibly repressed and on the verge of a breakdown. A kind psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith (played by Claude Rains), intervenes, sends Charlotte to a sanitarium. She then gets a makeover (the kind always featured in those preteen novels I used to read, when an awkward girl returned to school in the fall with a completely new look) and goes on a cruise. There, she meets and falls in love with Jerry, played by Paul Henreid. But, you know, the course of true love never did run smooth.

The moment Charlotte comes back from her cruise and moves in with her mother again, it’s business as usual as far as her mother is concerned. Her mother refuses to acknowledge that Charlotte has grown. It’s a reminder that when you’ve experienced positive changes in life, it does not mean that the people around you have done the same or even appreciate that you’ve changed. People tend to relapse into the same roles, especially adults and their children. This film features a cute and famous moment where Jerry lights two cigarettes and then gives one to Charlotte. Well, I’m sure it was cute in 1942—nowadays, the Surgeon General and every anti-smoking organization in America would be after those two.

When I first saw this movie, it was a bit odd seeing Bette Davis play such a milquetoast after seeing her be something of a hellraiser in All About Eve. And those infamous Bette Davis eyes convey Charlotte’s sense of sadness, just as they blazed with fury in All About Eve—really, Bette Davis was a phenomenal actress. It was also unusual for me to see Claude Rains in such a kind role after seeing him play shady characters in Notorious, Casablanca, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And I usually think of Paul Henreid as Victor Lazlo from Casablanca. The movie is based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, who also wrote Stella Dallas, which was also made into a movie, but I’ve never seen it. The novel takes its name from a line in a Walt Whitman poem: “Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.” This actually reminds me of Tennyson’s "Ulysses." This is a good movie for a lazy weekend, when you just want to curl up in a blanket and watch a good black and white movie.

Great lines:
Dr. Jaquith: “My dear Mrs. Vale, if you had deliberately and maliciously planned to destroy your daughter’s life, you couldn’t have done it more completely.”
Charlotte’s mom: “How? By having exercised a mother’s rights?”
Dr. Jaquith: “A mother’s rights, twaddle. A child has rights, a person has rights, to discover her own mistakes, to make her own way, to grow and blossom in her own particular soil.”