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Imagery and Sound in William Wyler's "The Letter"
From: Columbia University
| By:
Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The renowned Hollywood director William Wyler (1902-81) inspired such memorable performances as Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938) and Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur (1959). In this 1972 interview, conducted by Charles Higham for Columbia University's Oral History Research Office, Wyler discusses his work with Bette Davis and James Stephenson on the set of The Letter (1940), and describes how offstage bells and crafted silence contributed to a classic film-noir mood of murder and deceit. |
Question: Was The Letter a pre-scripted project that you came to after the script and casting were completed? |
William Wyler: They had decided to do The Letter, which was a remake of an earlier film. And the script, again, was written and I had read it and liked it. I liked working with Bette, so we got together again. |
Well, we had no cast when I came on, but I tested and I was very glad I used this man named Stephenson, who died later, who was a wonderful actor. |
William Wyler talks about special effects and Bette Davis's character in The Letter. |
He was at Warner Bros. under contract and nobody gave him any parts. Oh, yes, I remember. When we did this film, you see, there was an interesting episode about Stephenson. Somebody asked me to test him. I never knew the man. I think it was Jack Warner asking me to test this fellow. "Oh," he said, "we have a very good actor here, an Englishman named Stephenson." |
I said, "No, I never heard of him." |
He said, "He's very good. Why don't you test him? I think he'd be fine." |
I made the test. I found this fellow was absolutely first-rate. I went back to Jack Warner and said, "See, this fellow is fine." |
He was amazed. He said, "You mean you want to use him?" |
I said, "Yes, of course." |
He said, "Now, wait a minute." He may dispute this. Well, as I say, they came back to me with names of certain prominent actors, English actors. And he said, "We were just kidding about this fellow. I mean, he's just around here in stock. How about so-and-so?" He mentioned several prominent actors. |
I said, "No, this man is fine. I want to use him." |
I had to fight to get this man into the picture to play this part after they recommended him to me. And it turned out he was absolutely first-rate. |
Q: Was Bette concerned at having a virtual beginner as her co-star, or was she very helpful to him? |
Wyler: Oh, no, she had no objections of any kind. Of course, he wasn't her co-star, really. She was the star of the film, and Herbert Marshall played her husband. There was no co-star, so to speak. |
Q: Did Bette agree with you on the interpretation of the part of Leslie Crosby? |
Wyler: Yes, I think so. I think we had no differences on that at all. It was agreed that we should first believe her story. |
Q: She certainly gave one of her greatest performances, if not her greatest, in that, I think. |
Q: Yes, because all her tremendous emotional power was pushed down below the surface, you know. You felt she was going to explode any minute. But she was very cold and hard on the surface. Was this something you had to work on with her, or did she grasp that right away? |
Wyler: Well, it's the character. After all, a woman who can not only kill a man but, after she kills him, pump five more shots into the body that's on the ground, you know, that is not a warm creature. |
Q: What's very interesting is that you have two scenes which are almost the same. In the first scene she lies about the murder, and then you have exactly the same scene where she tells the truth. |
Wyler: Yes. I tried to parallel those scenes, even technically, in the camera setups and the way it was in the lighting and everything. I tried to have one scene recall the other. |
Q: Was it your idea to have her have this piece of lace which gradually grows all through the film until it's ... |
Wyler: No, that was in the story. I wish I could take credit for that, but that was part of the--it was a very good, symbolic thing, because it was associated with an English gentlewoman, you know. It would allay your suspicions that she was really a murderess. It was a very good piece of business. |
And we played on it perhaps a little too much. I remember one reviewer saying that that was sort of hammered in, you know, it was leaned on a bit too heavily. |
Q: The moon was a very strong image throughout. You used the moon a great deal. |
Wyler: Oh, yes, that, too. Yes, I was accused of doing--well, I think that was my idea to attempt to bring in something mysterious and supernatural. I suppose today it would be a little bit more--and it wasn't understood by some people. Today that would be a great thing. |
Q: I think it was marvelous. |
Wyler: Yes, because everybody would read into it what the director had in mind with that, and everybody would give it a different interpretation, and all sorts of interpretations, which the director never thought of at all. They would say, "Wasn't it marvelous! Absolutely a stroke of genius!" |
But it wasn't that. It was simply a bit of supernaturalism, which I thought belonged. But I remember that some critics felt that that was laid on a little too heavily, and maybe it was. |
Q: Did you do much background research on Malaya, on that area near Singapore? |
Wyler: A little bit. Not terribly much, no. It was an interesting background. Of course, today we would go there and we would shoot it in the streets of Singapore and in the jungles, but that was out of the question in those days. At Warner Bros., they built a whole sort of plantation, you know, and built very good sets. |
Q: That courtroom was a fantastic set you used, the courtroom huge, with the fans and everything. |
Wyler: Oh, yes, yes. Well, that was the style. Anytime you did a scene in Singapore or India or any of those places, the fans had big spotlights shining through so that the shadow of the fans was going around. It made a good effect. |
Q: Was it your idea to have the wind chime, the tinkler? |
Wyler: Yes, of course, that's another little thing to make it. Well, that happened to be on the set. It's a Chinese decorative thing that they hang on windows, and the soundman said, "That thing is bothering me," because it would. |
I heard that. I said, "That's great. Let's use it and have more of it." So we used that during silences, just because it happened to be there. I saw that this could make an eerie kind of noise, which would heighten the suspense. It's the sort of thing that you happen to find on the set like that, you know, a prop that you use to further the dramatic or comic qualities of the scene, but it just happened to be there. |
Q: It was augmented by Max Steiner, wasn't it? |
Wyler: Yes, yes, Max Steiner did the score. And as I remember it from those days, perhaps today it's sort of unsubtle, but he did wonderful scores for films. |
Q: He had a very romantic score for that. |
Wyler: Yes, I suppose, if you heard it today. I think, when you see old pictures, some of the things that are outdated more than anything are the music scores. |
Q: Yes, it's the only thing in the picture that dates. The rest of the picture is startlingly modern. |
Q: Her clothes, for instance, seem to be quite timeless. |
Q: They don't date at all. |
Wyler: Yes. It's the clothes, usually the clothes and the music score. When the violins start playing, you know, somehow today, violins get too sentimental or get too eerie. I mean, the accent's a little heavy in the old scores. |
I remember the way the script opened--a shot of this house, suddenly you hear a shot and a man comes staggering out, a woman behind him emptying her gun into the body of this man that had fallen--and I thought, "Gee, to start, that's sort of starting with a bang, you know." |
Wyler: Literally, yes. And I thought, well, in order to do it, one should prepare for that a little bit with an opposite mood. A mood of silence, quiet, people sleeping--all this. So I devised this shot that took a whole day to make. |
There was a little bit of a rumble about that at the studio at the time, not much, because I took a whole day and hadn't shot a script scene yet. On the first day, just scene number one--that's all I'd gotten. But it was a more effective opening this way by having this silence. |
But you're right; it should never have had any music. When they reissue those things, I mean, it's easy to take out music like that, but they never make changes when they send the thing on television. |
That reminds me. At the very end of the film, you know--you saw it recently, I assume--the arrest of Gale Sondergaard is so stupid, so idiotic. The thing should end with her killing Bette Davis. That's the end. In those days, nobody could get away with killing somebody, so for censorship reasons we had to tack on the scene of her being arrested. |
So she comes out of this garden and suddenly there are two policemen, or one policeman suddenly grabs her. And it's a silly anticlimactic ending. It was never in the play, but we had to do that. Now, I tried to tell somebody, "When this picture comes out on television, just lift it out and throw it away, because it doesn't belong." But nobody bothers to look at it or to do that. |
Q: But the original work ended when she just said, "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed," and then there was an end title. She wasn't killed or anything in the original version. She didn't die. |
Wyler: Yes, yes, "I still love the man I killed." Yes. That was her punishment. |
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