Shot in the Dark

I pretty much loathed Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory ('39) because it's an overcooked, histrionic melodrama that more or less sulks and pouts for 104 minutes with no general conviction or know how. (At least Jezebel and In This Our Life have, you know, "drama".)

However, I did love this shot that comes early on in the film in which Bette Davis is receiving her guesswork prognosis from the doctor played by George Brent. It's sort of like a Godard shot the way it shrinks its subject and drowns us in her miseries, lasting about ten-to-twelve seconds or so.

Ernest Haller, a Warner Bros. black-and-white regular, is responsible for the lensing.