Winter Meeting

It takes good critiquing skills to fully appreciate the surprisingly seductive subtleties of Bette Davis during her motion picture making prime. Winter Meeting is an intellectual's & critic's delight. Davis doesn't ever step out of her leading role as an extremely constrained character, Susan Greive. I can't find a flaw in her meticulous performance. The story is also of interest to the period when it was filmed.

Bette Davis at 40yo & 59 films into the height of her acting career, stars as an accomplished, upscale poet, Susan Grieve. Although Grieve is well traveled from soliciting her literary work, she resides in a posh brownstone in NYC. Her closest friend & confidant is an old-monied dapper gentleman, complete with the social graces of exquisitely good taste, Stacy Grant (43yo John Hoyt).

Believing that his secretary Peggy Markham (Janis Paige) will seduce a visiting war hero, Slick Novak (James Davis), Grant arranges a dinner party for the foursome, including the very reserved & demure Grieve (Davis). Instead, Novak instantly falls for the ever so proper poet who has no romantic interests.

After Grieve & Novak engage in a private romance, she's romantically awakened in a way that she's never been before. As such, Grieve is falling in love with Novak. Something has to go wrong to upset as fine a romance as theirs, doesn't it? It always does....

This film offers no exception. Novak has a closely guarded secret that he discloses to Grieve that changes everything between them.

I found the best on-screen chemistry to be between Davis & Hoyt. Davis comes off as the kind of woman who enjoys being around elegant men who aren't hounding after women; perhaps even gay men. Hoyt fits that image to a T. Their ultra close friendship is worth more than any romance~

Bette Davis stars as lonely NYC poetess Susan Grieve. Her best friend Stacy (John Hoyt) asks her to accompany him on a blind double date along with visiting war hero Slick Novak (Jim Davis) and Stacy's secretary Peggy (Janis Paige). The sparks are immediate between Susan and Slick, and they spend a snowy weekend together in the country where they both confront deep-seated issues.

Bette Davis is dependably good, but Jim Davis is one of the worst regularly-employed actors in Hollywood history. Watching him struggle through his lines is almost as painful as it is humorous. When his character finally reveals his "dark secret", it elicited a chuckle rather than a gasp, which I don't think was the intention. The film's high point is a surprisingly open performance by John Hoyt as the proverbial "gay best friend" from countless future romance films. Of course it's never explicitly stated that Hoyt's Stacy is gay, given this is still the production code era. It's not a mocking or condescending performance, either, which is doubly surprising for the time. Some of the dialogue between he and Davis has a pre-Code vibe, rich in double entendre. If only his character had been in service of a better story and movie.

The first thirty minutes may repel some.It's very talky ,it's filmed stage production style.This is a film which grows on you,you 've got to be patient for the "action" is minimal,and most amazing thing, in what is pure psychological drama ,there's not the easy way out : the flashbacks.Another director -it's the first film I've seen by Bretaigne Windust-would have at least enlivened things by introducing two very long flashbacks dealing with the two characters' past.Both have a secret to conceal .This is the very long conversation between them which reveals us that the poetess was demanding,idolizing her father,displaying no compassion for a mother who did not live up to her /their expectations;the soldier is a hero but someone told him something that has completely changed his way of seeing things .

People who expect a mushy romance ,a melodrama ,a love triangle (with the secretary) will be disappointed."Winter Meeting" shows the way to compassion for the others,be they hopeless.

This is a much more than your typical Bette Davis melodrama. Here, Davis plays a NYC poetess (Susan Grieve), who runs around in high social circles. One of her society friends, Stacy Grant (John Hoyt), invites her to dine with him as he entertains a navel hero, Slick Novak (Jim Davis, Jock Ewing from TV's Dallas) who is staying briefly in town. Stacy's idea was to make Susan his date while pairing Novak up with his secretary, Peggy Markham (Janis Paige). However, the evening doesn't go as planned, since Novak falls for Susan rather than Peggy and invites himself into Susan's house after the evening's entertainment.

In spite of Susan and Novak not hitting it off too well at first, they start to talk. They soon discover--after driving to Susan's family farm in CT--that they each have unresolved issues from their past. Susan's problem has to do with her dead father; how her mother had treated him which lead him to commit suicide.

Susan never forgave her mother for her cheapness. However, Novak's insistence that Susan had not tried to see her mother's side of the issue leaves Susan to question her own beliefs.

Novak's unresolved issue is spiritual in nature. Since he had been 16, he had always felt a strong need to enter the priesthood and had been discouraged from this by talking to a priest before entering the Navy.

The two help each other to resolve these some of these issues. In the end, this is not so much of a romantic story between a man and a woman as it is a mutual guidance about leading each other to spiritual epiphanies (or sudden moments of soulful clarity) of how to proceed with their lives.

P.S. This is one of those movies in which the two leading co-stars stare the last name: Davis & Davis.

I've seen this film a few times, and, perhaps because I'm an admirer of Miss Davis, I've always enjoyed it. Her performance of the long scene in the country house is really magnificent. Brilliant, thrilling acting, of the highest order. I enjoyed the dialogue very much, because, unlike many films, we really get to hear someone let out their innermost thoughts and it's very much like such a scene would be in real life. I think you have to be in the mood for this picture, and it will not strike everyone the same way - but it would be sad not to be able to identify or sympathize with characters trying to come to grips with sad facts in their past, because that's all of us, at one time or another.