Olivia @ 100: The Dark Mirror
Monday, June 20, 2016 at 7:00PM We're counting down to Olivia de Havilland's historic 100th birthday (July 1st!). Team Experience will be looking at highlights and curiosities from her career. Here's Jason...
I'm proud of my fellow Film Experience members Dan and Josh for keeping their focus on the films so far in this series, but it seems kind of impossible to talk about Olivia de Havilland's 1946 thriller The Dark Mirror, which has her playing good and evil twins, without diving into the gossipy froth of her legendary lifetime rivalry with sister Joan Fontaine. The Dark Mirror sits somewhere between an exorcism and a single-gloved slap-fight - Fight Club via Film Noir. It offered Olivia the chance to play versions of both her and her sister's popular images, exaggerated and unloosed upon one another.
In a 2015 Time magazine piece on the sisters' feud it's said that Olivia was known for playing "pretty and charming, naïve" (like Melanie in Gone With the Wind) while Joan's roles were more "moody, intuitive and emotional." (Think the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca.) Those broad descriptions fit the broad characters of Terry and Ruth Collins to a tee -- one's a suspected murderess, coarse and vulgar but forthright, while the other is noble and suffering do-gooder who seems to be allowing her sister to walk all over her and orchestrate a cover-up. But which is which (and who'll win that damn Oscar???)
To her profound credit de Havilland clearly relishes tearing into both roles and complicates the "good" and "bad" aspects of both women every chance that she gets - the real tragedy by the film's end is seeing what made the two women so unique begin to dissolve away, swap out. Early on, showing exquisite control over her body language and voice, de Havilland manages to make it clear which sister is which even beyond the aid of the oft black/white costuming.
But even more impressively as the film progresses and the sisters start playing each other she makes Ruth-by-Terry and Terry-by-Ruth their own creations, allowing each sisters' perspective on the other poke out from underneath. We can always tell who's in control...
...until we can't. Not to spoil anything but there is a moment where the mirror cracks and the film upends our understanding of who's who and who's doing what, the violence of the moment hinging entirely on de Havilland's performance, and it's a corker. And sure, I can only conjecture, but it seems that this sort of performance-playing with public versus private personae might've been informed by being one-half of an Oscar-winning sister duo bobbing along on the top of the world. And come with the scars to prove it.
Reader Comments (7)
And of course THE DARK MIRROR was released in 1946, several months after the film that was to win Olivia her first Oscar - TO EACH HIS OWN.
I always thought THE DARK MIRROR had a bad reputation, but I watched it a few years ago and it was great fun. It also got an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Original Story (alongside TO EACH HIS OWN) so it can't have been that badly thought of at the time.
This is a good time because of the whole de Havilland/Fontaine subtext but Olivia has made better films. That tension adds something that the two original choices for the film, Rosalind Russell who had to back out for health reasons and Ginger Rogers who turned it down, would not have brought to the picture. Still for an overblown melodrama which gave her a chance to be rotten and good at once it's worth checking out. The same can be said of most of her films simply because of her presence in the cast, often she's one of the few redeeming features of some of her very early films.
Robert Siodmak's direction is solid though not quite as compelling as it had been on his previous two films, The Spiral Staircase and The Killers.
It's such a bizarre coincidence (or not) that Olivia's good friend Bette Davis had her own good/evil twins movie out the same year. A Stolen Life is a terrific melo--and the pair of films proved a warmup for the good pals' Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte nearly two decades down the road.
I like the way you highlight the layers of her work in this movie. She does a lot without being showy (until the fun climax). She should have done a few more darker characters in her career. As she proved here and in Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (and a couple of other films to a lesser extent), she was very effective in bringing out the nasty side of them. Maybe it's all the more effective because we expect Melanie and Marian and get something quite different!
In my opinion Olivia could win her first Oscar for her double role in THE DARK MIRROR instead that for the soapish TO EACH IS OWN
Great little bits of trivia from you guys, thanks for it all!
I agree with Joel that as a film on its own TDM isn't anybody's idea of a masterpiece, but it is entertaining and Olivia's just excellent in it -- I honestly was not expecting it, I thought this would be a throwaway camp role for her, but she does some really sharp work in this.
Except the silly necklaces that SPELLED out each twin's names, The Dark Mirror was a wonderful showcase for de Havilland's range and she nailed it!!!
IMO, she shld've won her best actress for this rather than the six-hankie soap To Each His Own!!