Does anyone have a problem with the ending?

OMG, the ending is a triumph. Do they die? Of course they die. But with honor.

Without the ending, the film would be a wonderfully-depicted costume drama. With it, it's transcendent.

Keep in mind, with all of the evil Miss Julie brought about during her 'reign' in the course of the film, giving her life was the least she could do. So along with transcendence, the film offers redemption.

Increasingly, I fear, we are losing the ability to process;

Repentance, atonement, reparation...all in hope of forgiveness...

and with forgiveness, redemption.

The fashion today seems closer to apportioning blame, claiming persecution and demanding recompense...acceptance of responsibility to be avoided at all costs.

Your friend is casting about for someone to blame, then suffer direct and immediate consequence. If that happens, then your friend can relax, assured of no personal responsibility.

Ms. Davis' 'Jezebel' Julie, on the other hand, illustrates what the complete process *should* be, should have been and should continue to be.

Your friend believes simple repentance should be sufficient to earn a reward. A toddler gets a hug for just saying, usually in response to prompting, "I'm sorry". Growth *should* develop the realization redemption is *only* reached by the completion of the process.

The difference between 'not responsible' and 'irresponsible' is fading fast.







Many anti-fur protests, few anti-leather. Seniors & models must be easier to bully than bikers.

For me
Davis and Fonda characters die. Hardly anyone survived that kind of epidemic. She goes and gives her life, but if you think about it she dies with him. Steals him in death from the wife. So she stayed true to character.

caymandj

The critiques I have read about this film seem to portray Davis' character as a heroine of self sacrifice at the end. I don't see it that way at all. She was such a selfish woman that her motive was not sacrificial or intended in any way to be redemptive but moreover was done in the hope that if she could nurse Preston back to health that she would win his heart.

For me it's no classic and pales in comparison with a powerhouse like Gone With The Wind.

"yellow fever isn't contagious"

It's something that always annoyed me about the movie. I realize that this wasn't known at the time the movie was set and the characters behavior made sense to them. However, it was known by the time the movie was made. With 20/20 hindsight her going off to the island, whatever her reason, put her in no more danger than staying at home.

I loved the ending, it was an amazing way to end this masterpiece, as some other poster said, they were going to die with honor.

*** SPOILERS ***


One - That it was Julie's attempt to redeem herself by sacrificing herself by going with Preston.

Two - It was Julie's manipulation to get what she wanted. First - SHE gets to be with Preston...and ONLY her. Second - SHE will be the one that nurses him. If they both survive(unlikely, but), then her generosity & care will embolden her to him. Third - SHE dies with the man she truly loves. Fourth - Her actions will APPEAR to others as unselfish and self sacrificing.

The second is the ending i beleive to be the intent of the film. I DO beleive she truly loved Preston. Also, the manipulation is also indicative, and congruent with her character

With all due respect, JEZEBEL was made in an age when films were aimed at adults and as a relative prestige piece, at sophisticated adults who did not need everything spelled out for them. The BEST plays, films and works of literature have always lead their audiences into issues and left them to think them out beyond the "end" of the "story." Only children's films need every little issue completely spelled out for them or resolved in black and white.

Some of the speculations raised elsewhere in this thread are excellent and historically accurate - yellow fever was not necessarily fatal, but the survival rate from the 1850's when the play and movie were set through the early 1900's were relatively low. What they did not know until research by Walter Reed and others during the construction of the Panama Canal in 1903 was that the disease was spread by infected mosquitoes, not "fever mists" or personal contact as earlier thought based on empirical observations, so the Bette Davis character may well have survived despite her presumably redemptive sacrifice (a concept not entirely dated today, but more carefully buried so as not to seem too blatant).

The film (and play before it) was (were) about the relationships (in a rational world the Fonda character would have dumped the Davis character's sorry ass YEARS before she finally drove him away with the "red dress incident") not the details of the plot contrivances. That JEZEBEL does very well and ends at the perfect time to let us appreciate the complexity of those relationships. It's amazing how many of the most famous of Davis' characters turn on that movement to redemption - from NOW VOYAGER and DARK VICTORY to her best film, ALL ABOUT EVE. It took a really great film, THE LITTLE FOXES, to leave her character *unredeemed* but merely realizing the hell she's painted herself into!

For me, the most interesting character in this piece is Lew (Lou) Payton's "Uncle Cato," repeating his Broadway role (there called "Uncle Billy"), and serving as the none too subtle conscience of the pre-Civil War/emancipation piece. The Davis character is merely willfully spoiled immaturity and thoroughly unpleasant, the Fonda character too remotely tolerant and idiotically oblivious as he subjects his charming Northern wife to his bigoted parochial neighbors and his obsessed ex-girlfriend - Payton breathed the real life of humanity. It's also worth noting from a perspective standpoint that when this film first opened, the period portrayed was only as remote to its audiences as the year of the great Stock Market Crash and the start of the Depression is to us today...almost within the realm of experience; certainly within their parents'.