For the next entry in our Year by Year series, I proposed a list of Best Villain Death scenes. This idea proved problematic because what we would have, in effect, an entire list of spoilers. So we went back to the drawing board for the next Year by Year feature. However, that idea of bad guys still appealed to me.
There is nothing like alliteration. The dearly departed musician Vic Chesnutt called it the "spice of life." So as a death list of villains went out the window, it morphed into a list of Bitches, Bastards and Badasses.
Some of the more interesting characters in our filmic history fall into one of these categories. Do people really like the sweet and straitlaced Dorothy? Fuck no, it's the Wicked Witch that runs away with The Wizard of Oz. I am pleased to present this new feature as we celebrate the biggest Bitches, Badasses the cinema world has thrown at us. - David Harris
1939: The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), The Wizard of Oz, Bitch
Is there any villain as cruel as the Wicked Witch of the West? It is a rite of passage to view The Wizard of Oz and cower as this green-faced monster sends her henchmen after Dorothy, or as she takes pleasure at setting the Scarecrow alight. The Wicked Witch is greedy, and much of her hatred of Dorothy stems from the young girl's good looks, but she also exhibits traditional signs of bitchiness, such as her coveting of Dorothy's possessions.
She skywrites "Surrender Dorothy" for all of Oz to see, just to rub in how much she hates the poor girl and she is motivated by Dorothy's red slippers. She covets a pair of shoes so much she is willing to kill for it- women say that to each other all the time, but it takes a real bitch to go through with the plan.
At the end of the film, the seemingly indestructible Witch is defeated by what is essentially a drink thrown in her face. If reality television is any indicator, this is the most effective method of dealing with a raging bitch, so if a drink in the face can stop a dating game contestant in her tracks, it's only fitting that the Wicked Witch be ended by one. It has been said that the nicest people play the most horrible roles. Margaret Hamilton must have been a saint. - Rafael Gaitan
1940: Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), Rebecca, Bitch
Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca is the perfect gothic thriller, an eerie and melodramatic delight fraught with frantic violins, sinister secrets and some of the best performances of a prolific and brilliant cinematic year. Adapted from Daphne Du Maurier's novel of the same name, Rebecca chronicles the fate of a mousy young woman (Joan Fontaine) whose innocence charms the jaded heart of wealthy widower Maxim De Winter (Laurence Olivier). The pedantic but dashing De Winter marries Fontaine's nameless, love-struck heroine and sweeps her away to his majestic ancestral estate; but the fairytale ends abruptly when Mrs. De Winter realizes that her new home and husband alike remain haunted by the memory of their former mistress, the beautiful Rebecca - and that the embers of that memory are obsessively stoked at the hand of Manderley's all-knowing housekeeper, the magnificently creepy Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson).
A consummate master of the crazy eye, Anderson twists Du Maurier's subtler imagining of Danvers into a multilayered and malevolent villainess. Though she maintains an icy façade of staid and stern perfection amongst other members of the household, Anderson's Danvers seems to relish exposing the cracks to her new mistress and makes little effort to conceal the pulsing, sensualized idolatry of Rebecca that has warped her mind. Not content to simply cow the fragile Mrs. De Winter into submission to Rebecca's power over Maxim and Manderley, Mrs. Danvers tries to psychologically manipulate the girl as well: in an iconically chilling scene, she finds Fontaine exploring the immaculately preserved bedroom that has become a shrine to Rebecca's beauty and, dropping her heretofore unflappable housekeeper's demeanor, becomes maniacally girlish as she parades Rebecca's exquisite possessions before her increasingly terrified successor. White as stone, clad in an almost clerical black dress and gently fondling Rebecca's negligee, Anderson transforms Danvers into the high priestess entrusted with Rebecca's most private (and, as it happens, sexually depraved) secrets - secrets that she will protect by seducing Mrs. De Winter into Rebecca's powerful, poisonous shadow. - Lauren Westerfield
1941: Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), Citizen Kane,
Bastard
Calling Charles Foster Kane an out and out bastard feels a bit like calling a marauding bear inconsiderate; it tells you about the results of his actions (bad), but it doesn't tell you about the true nature of the beast in any substantial way. Not that the film makes excuses for Kane or ultimately pardons him of anything - Welles' achievement with this film was in making someone thoroughly unlikable and cruel a still, not sympathetic, but compelling, character. As much of a tragic figure as he is a son-of-a-bitch, as much a lost cause as a bastard, Kane is cobbled together by Welles through the filter of the zeitgeist. We see him transform over a number of years, from a poor kid into a newspaper magnate, and we see his desperation to succeed transform into ruthlessness. That's the real story behind Kane, in a way; it's a film about American entrepreneurship and aspiration, and the damaging effects success can have on a person's soul when it's motivated by desperation and insecurity.
Welles, of course, never got to taste that same degree of success, America's most brilliant cinematic artist was instead, over the course of his career, forced by the Charles Foster Kanes of Hollywood to constantly jump through hoops to get his films made. When it comes to Welles, the only true bastards to talk about are the people who kept us from getting more, and truer, work from him. In the end, Kane is maybe the only picture he was able to make with full control, an entire sorrowful life crystallizing and taking shape before our eyes out of a single word slipping from a dying man's lips - "Rosebud..." - Andrei Alupului
1942: Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), Cat People, Bitch
To label Irena Dubrovna a bitch is a mistake on many levels. Ignoring the obvious irony inherent in proclaiming a woman who turns into a cat an insult that literally means a female dog, the real error in such a snap judgment is that it implies that Dubrovna consciously chooses her plight, that the evolution of her personality in Jacques Tourneur's Cat People is wholly voluntary. Worse, it would seem to indicate that Simone Simon is playing a malicious force of nature, when in reality Irena Dubrovna is a character who is much more complicated. If Dubrovna is a villain, then she is a merely a villain to male sexuality.
Snicker all you want, but at its heart, Cat People is a fierce, unrelenting examination of the state of the gender wars in America shortly before World War II. Dubrovna is an independent woman, with a job that is rewarding and intellectually stimulating until she meets a man who longs to take her away. Over tea, Dubrovna tells her suitor, Oliver (Kent Smith), about a folktale from her homeland which she had been illustrating when they first met. Her drawing depicted a ruggedly masculine knight impaling a sensual, sleek panther on the end of his sword. The tale itself revolves around Christian villagers being seduced by the dark arts before the knight from the picture saves them from the monsters their passion had turned them into.
The combination of an upbringing that refused to allow for passion and emigration to a prudish, puritanical society has left Dubrovna "frigid," a trait her suitor sees as more of a challenge than anything else. Oliver uses Dubrovna's frigidness as a weapon, conning her into marriage and then forcing her into therapy in hopes of taming her dormant sexuality. But when Dubrovna embraces her passion, Oliver leaves her for his assistant, terrified of what he's unleashed. Dubrovna in turn is left alone with the sometimes fatal whims of the beast she contains within, to tragic results.
So who's the real bitch? The strong female who only falls because she allows herself to become subservient to a dominant male figure who unwittingly unleashes her sexuality only to abandon her? Or maybe the wily assistant, seducing away a married man? In a different world the answer would be clear: it's the fickle male, demanding his women be Mary and whore in one, walking away unscathed after destroying the hearts and lives of those he's wooed. - Morgan Davis
1943: Uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten), Shadow of a Doubt, Bastard
We all have our favorite uncle; the one we turn to when life at home becomes unbearable and suffocating. But what if that uncle was an unrepentant serial killer? That's the dilemma that Young Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) finds herself in when she discovers that the man she was named after, Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten), may very well be "The Merry Widow Murderer." And it's not just Young Charlie. Everyone in the small town of Santa Rosa is taken in by the more urbane and sophisticated Big Charlie. His sister, Emma, has formed an emotional life around him, much greater than her bond with her 'unromantic' husband. He has endeared himself to the locals by donating to a children's charity hospital and opening in Joe's bank an account for $40,000.
Hitchcock scored a major casting coup with Joseph Cotten as Big Charlie. Perhaps there is no other actor, save Jimmy Stewart, that best personifies the wholesome Americana of that time period. He's blandly handsome, witty, debonair and intelligent. But Cotten is equally adept at playing the concealed troubled side of Charlie. When Cotten slips into a rant against the privileged women he's murdered, it's all the more disturbing.
Young Charlie discovers Big Charlie's rotten core when he ruptures their almost telepathic bond with another bitter diatribe. "You live in a dream. Do you know the world is a foul sty?" snarls Big Charlie at his adoring niece. "Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?" Young Charlie's naivety and idealism are mercilessly torn away from her. And so is ours. Shadow of a Doubt is about what lies below the surface while we live in complacent denial. It's about the traumatic disillusionment we face when the façade of everyday normality cannot cover the deeper darkness within. - James Shelledy
1944: Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), Double Indemnity, Bitch
Double Indemnity is a quintessential film noir, both a genre classic and an American classic. Its pedigree is impeccable: director Billy Wilder, novelist James M. Cain, co-screenwriter Raymond Chandler and actors Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. Its characters and set-up now feel almost mythological: a guy, a girl and a murder which goes wrong. As in so much film noir, the characters aren't criminals, but they commit crimes and are undone by greed, lust and an almost Greek tragedy-like sense of fate. Despite an unflattering wig and the name Phyllis, Barbara Stanwyck oozes sensuality, treachery and danger. From the moment, MacMurray's insurance agent Walter Neff meets her (she's wrapped in a towel) and she innocently asks about accident insurance, we know this is not going to end well. She lures him into a murdering her husband and then staging the death so that it looks like an accident. She promises money and love, but all he gets is a bullet. In the voice over narration, he says ruefully "I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman," which could be the motto for about 500 different films. She stops seeing him, starts seeing her stepdaughter's sullen boyfriend and it's even suggested that she was partly responsible for the death of her husband's first wife.
Stanwyck, as she often was, is tough, calculating and sexy in her most famous role and if the femme fatales of the period feel a little misogynistic, it should be remembered that the females were often smarter and more dangerous than the men. Her iconic character recurs again and again in films like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Body Heat and The Last Seduction, but none of them were as memorable. Right before she confesses that she didn't love him and they shoot each other, she tells him "We're both rotten." Walter replies "Only you're a little more rotten."- Lukas Sherman
1945: Katherine "Kitty" March (Joan Bennett), Scarlet Street, Bitch
Scarlet Street was adapted from the French novel, La Chienne, which literally translates to "The Bitch." That's an apt description of Katherine "Kitty" March (Joan Bennett), the totally amoral succubus of Fritz Lang's classic film noir. From the moment she sets her sights on poor Chris Cross (Edgar G. Robinson), he never stands a chance. She won't stop until she bleeds him dry. She has Cross so tightly wrapped around her finger that even when he discovers that she's been selling his paintings under her name; instead of being upset, he seems actually glad. He has only one demand, that she allows him to paint her portrait, to which she replies, "sure, and you can start right now," as she hands him a bottle of nail polish so he can paint her toenails. "They'll be masterpieces," she purrs.
It's not just about the money for Kitty. There is a sick cruelty to her that she revels in. Even when her weasely pimp, Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea), slaps her around, she gets a perverse kick out of it. When Cross finally realizes that he's been had, Kitty feels no remorse. "You're old and ugly and I'm sick of ya! Sick, sick, sick!" Kitty spits contemptuously at him. The insults are so mean that you can't help but to cheer when the milquetoast Cross responds by stabbing her repeatedly with a pair of scissors. It's almost as if she forced him to do it. Kitty's cruelty even extends beyond the grave as Cross is tormented by memories of her after he's been released.
Joan Bennett does a wonderful job of vamping it up as Kitty. Her breathy line readings are intriguing. She says one thing, but her face says something entirely different. Scarlet Street along with Woman in the Window (made a year earlier also by Fritz Lang) would mark Bennett as one of the quintessential film noir femme fatales. Bennett was a bit of a temptress herself in real life. Just six years after this film, her husband shot her agent in a jealous rage; the resulting scandal virtually ended her film career. - James Shelledy
1946: Mr. Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), It's a Wonderful Life, Bastard
What kind of bastard could heartlessly exploit an entire town of goodhearted people for his own profit, especially during the worst financial implosion in American history? And especially when he's already the richest man in town? Mr. Henry Potter, that's who. In the course of Frank Capra's masterpiece of ambiguous sentimentality, It's A Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) tries to block home loans for the impoverished folk of Bedford Falls, gouges them relentlessly during the Great Depression and finally actually conceals a misplaced bank deposit from his relentlessly wholesome nemesis George Bailey (James Stewart). To cap it all off, he even threatens Bailey with a warrant for "bank fraud," like he wasn't holding $8,000 of ill-gotten money in his office.
But more than that, Mr. Potter is so relentless that given the chance (as suicide-spurred supernatural intervention reveals), he would transform the entire idyllic town into a drunken, crime ridden cesspool of bastards just like him. Mr. Potter's greatest streak of vileness is not just his own inner spitefulness, but his ability to corrupt those around him. And with Lionel Barrymore portraying him, a scion of a great acting family renowned for portraying an equally great bastard, Ebenezer Scrooge, over the years, there could be no better portrayal of a man smug and secure in his power as the biggest fish in a small pond. - Nathan Kamal
1947: Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), Black Narcissus, Bitch
Powell & Pressburger's Black Narcissus is a lot of things: a sublime Technicolor showpiece, a winking comedy of manners, an overt swipe at colonialist arrogance, a colorful peek at life in Himalayan India, but its perhaps most satisfying as a simmering, protracted catfight. The battle goes down between young mother superior Sister Clodagh (straight-laced, blameless and inescapably boring) played by Deborah Kerr, and the increasingly unhinged Sister Ruth. Ruth, as acted by Kathleen Byron, provides the film's dramatic crux as the steadily disintegrating weak side of an un-acted-upon love triangle, with both women trying to smother their desire for the roguish Dean (David Farrar), a British agent who's gone partially native. Ruth spends most of the films twitching in her constricting habit, delivering a great facial performance as the nuns struggle to keep focus while working out of a converted pleasure palace.
Thankfully, this all culminates in a scene where she totally lets loose, appearing bareheaded, demonic and murderous, a personification of the unruly local wildness that has quashed the nuns best intentions. Black Narcissus may stand out as a slightly icky reduction of India, an antiquely peculiar land which threatens the well-intentioned propriety of its colonizers, but Sister Ruth retains a definite charm, a bristling character of undeniable force. - Jesse Cataldo
1948: Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart), Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bastard
Fred C. Dobbs, played masterfully by Humphrey Bogart, is the kind of low-life parasite you want to avoid while traveling. He has few resources of his own to offer - we first meet him bumming for change on Mexican streets, yelling at street kids (one of which played by a young Robert Blake) and cursing his luck. When the going is easy he's eager to play equal shares and bygones be bygones, but when things start to get a little hairy, he's the first to demand his contributions be recognized, and the first to call dibs on his shares.
When Dobbs and his work-camp confidant Bob Curtain (Tim Walt) venture out into the wilderness to find the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Mountains, led by indefatigable old-timer, Howard (played by Walter Huston). Dobbs quickly starts to slide as the earlier easy promises of equal work and equal shares breed recriminations and second-guessing. He starts bickering with Curtain and Howard, eventually coming to blows with Curtain, who he leaves for dead - despite Curtain having saved Dobbs in a mining accident only days before. The more gold they find, the stronger his paranoia becomes. - Sean Marchetto
[Logos: Jason Stoff]
