an abrupt ending!


wow---this is my first time seeing the 1929 version after having seen the Bette Davis version (1940) at least two or three times. this has quite an abrupt ending, but i think i like it better than 1940 version. Jeanne Eagels was much more intense than Bette Davis, and i loved Bette! for those of you who have seen both versions, which did you like best and why?

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I guess the ending does seem "abrupt" when you keep in mind that Bette Davis gets her "comeuppance" in the 1940; while in this movie, you're waiting breathlessly to see what's going to happen to Leslie, particularly since it's a precode movie and anything can happen.

Here are some things I wrote in another post talking about the movies:

The last couple of lines are particularly powerful. Eagles and Bette Davis utter the sames lines, but Davis (THE Bette Davis) actually feels very weak and hollow compared to Jeanne Eagles.

Though, cinematically better, it always felt like there was something missing in the 1940 version, most likely it was probably because the later version had to be so "polished" because it was a postcode movie; whereas the 1929 movie was much more raw and powerful. You didn't have to bring in a 3rd party, in the form of some ridiculous, vengeful natives to do Leslie in. She and her husband make the consequences of their own fate.


I love that husband and wife both completely shed their respectabilities and become so primitive, "common," and "vulgar" with each other (ironically the very words to describe the natives they hate so much).

They absolutely ruin each other with their spite and vengeance toward each other so much that you don't know which one gains the upper hand on each other. As I was writing this, I realized, this was probably as connected as husband and wife ever felt toward each other.

Somerset Maugham is just absolute master of human frailties and shortcomings. It's too bad there aren't more writers like him who explore human nature so damn well.

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I felt the ending was quite abrupt also, rendering Leslie's confession ineffective. Glad that TCM broadcast this film - a definite curio and a must see despite it's primitive filmmaking.

Stylistically, the Davis 1940 version is still a knockout.

"The flip side of fear is understanding."

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I actually felt that ending it right there made her speech all the more powerful because rather than showing Leslie wasting away in misery all those years (if they didn't end it then and there), it showed that her husband wouldn't be the one suffering and, ultimately, ensured her revenge over him. It actually made the movie for me.

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Yes, the abrupt ending bothered me, too, although the 1940 ending didn't seem quite right, either -- a little false and contrived. But I preferred it.

Overall I definitely prefered the Bette Davis version. I think it handled the plot better, filling in some necessary details that weren't in the earlier version. And, coming from a later period, the production values were better, so it had more interest for the eye. Jeanne Eagles had a lock on your attention in the court scene and the conclusion, but it was a little more difficult to see her as a lover because of her twitchiness and lack of Hollywood glamorous good looks. With Bette Davis, on the other hand, there was a sexuality lurking behind her poise and proper manner. But most of all, I liked the way everyone talked, in that cool, clipped, stilted, stiff-upper-lip way of the English educated classes. I don't know if people actually spoke that way in real life, but it was probably the ideal that they strove for, and I found it a great pleasure to hear, like a kind of music.

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Personally - they are both good movies and really close, but I liked the 1940 version slightly better.

I preferred the less build-up to the murder in the 1940 version. Also, I didn't feel any empathy for Jeanne as to the actual crime where I did a little for Bette.

1929 version 7 / 10
1940 version 8 / 10

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Well, after watching both versions, and admittedly both actresses totally carried the film, for me the main difference that made the 1940 version a tad better was the way it was filmed. I thought that showing the entire murder scene in the beginning kind of was a let down. The ending, however, goes to the 29 version. Much more of a realistic finish, and a lifetime of remorse.

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raventhom says > I thought that showing the entire murder scene in the beginning kind of was a let down. The ending, however, goes to the 29 version. Much more of a realistic finish, and a lifetime of remorse.
I agree with you. I enjoyed both movies. I saw the 1929 version first and liked it even though I did think the ending was abrupt as the OP and others have said. TCM played them back-to-back so I was able to see the 1940 version immediately after.

I think I would have preferred seeing them in reverse order but I can't blame TCM. I had them on DVR so I made that decision myself. I like the way the Bette Davis version unfolded. It was a more complex movie yet, I felt, we were left in the dark. In the 1929 version everything is laid out right from the beginning so I felt I was just going along for the ride.

In the 1940 version we see Mrs. Crosbie shooting someone but we know very little else. We never meet Hammond so we can't judge his treatment of her. Everything we learn about the motive and circumstances leading to the murder come from her.

What I did not like about the 1929 version is the way she blamed her husband for the affair and all that stemmed from it. In the 1940 version she takes doesn't seem to blame him as much as she blames not being able to deal with the circumstances.

Also, in the second Hammond's relationship with the Chinese woman is completely different. She's not his mistress, she's his wife. She's legitimized so it seems odd that she would let her husband's name and reputation be dragged through the mud. I couldn't understand her agreeing to sell the letter. Her husband's estate would have provided for her. When she passed up the money I thought the ending was inevitable. She wanted Leslie released so she could take vengeance on her personally. In the first she humiliates her but it was pretty much her only recourse. As a mistress she likely would have gotten nothing and would probably not have made a very good witness in court.

I could go on but I think I've said plenty. These are two versions of the 'same' story but they are different in very significant ways. As I've said, there are elements I prefer in one or the other but I don't think it's fair or necessary to compare the movies.


Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]

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I agree with you about the ending. I was hoping to see how she coped with her punishment. I also prefer this version. Ms. Eagles was great portraying a woman lost in love, rejected by said love, and down right hateful when she gunned him down.
The ending is probably more realistic, in regards to her fate.

I have been bent and broken, but, I hope, into a better shape, Grimm

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Focusing just on the ending - here is some insight that could be helpful. The word abrupt is a misnomer -such endings used to be intentional, for effect, to maximize the power of the finale.

I appreciate the changes in filmmaking and storytelling that have occurred over the decades, but as a film buff am drawn toward older methods. Without the gimmicks which gradually have taken over -such as the revived 3-D craze nowadays.

In the Silent Era, the notion of ending on a high point, without the coda or resolution that audiences have been coaxed into expecting (as most of the posts in this thread implicitly reveal) was commonly done. Think of it as the cinema equivalent of an O. Henry short story, or in more recent decades the shock endings of H.E. Bates short stories.

Such is the case with 1929's early talkie "The Letter", where the final speech with all its dramatic impact virtually cuts to a shot of the Paramount mountain logo, indicating in shorthand "That's All Folks!" and time for the cinema audience to go home to digest what they've just seen. When I saw this film for the first time at a MoMA screening in NYC (many years ago), I had the same excited reaction as a theatergoer of the '20s would, not really the same as watching it on TV, home video, streaming or whatever.

Many great filmmakers agree with this concept, but have trouble delivering. Three famous examples are the "tinkered with" movies, all of them classics. Hitchcock in "Psycho" added the hokey (but effective in its own way) psychological explanation scene discussing Bates' case and then we get to see the memorably catatonic Perkins in aftermath. For "Double Indemnity", Wilder's originally shot ending scene in the gas chamber was dropped for different reasons but the result is still more conventional than planned. Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" didn't end with protagonist Kevin McCarthy screaming his paranoid warnings in vain on the highway to a vulnerable but ignorant public, but rather with a tacked-on upbeat talky ending of "help is on the way".

I've seen this "end on a high point" technique used only on rare occasions in recent times, certainly favored by genre directors such as Dario Argento for "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" and "Cat o' Nine Tails" -he likes to end his thrillers with a bang. For fans who can tolerate (or even dig) hardcore pornography, the actress India Summer directed an excellent dramatic lesbian feature titled "Perfect Fit" for Girlfriends Films which features a brilliant example of this approach in its final scene.

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Thank-you for the film lesson.

And what fresh Hell is this?, Malory from Archer

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The lack of music at the end gives that abrupt feeling.

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The abrupt ending was the actual ending of the 1927 play that Maugham wrote.
By the 1940's, with the establishment of the Production Code Administration, the movie studio was told that an adulterous wife needed to be punished so the ending was changed.

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