The Little Foxes: William Wyler

Here's a curious little film. William Wyler's The Little Foxes doesn't appear on any Best Of lists of great films that I have ever been able to find. The film wasn't on the 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. It isn't on any AFI Top 100 or Top 10 lists. And it isn't even a member of Roger Ebert's Great Movies Collection. And yet, during my research as a film studies student, The Little Foxes is constantly mentioned as one of the most important and ground-breaking films of the 1940s. William Wyler's classical decoupage and Gregg Toland's cinematography was nothing short of revolutionary according to serious film scholars. Legendary French film critic André Bazin, most famously known for inspiring the French New Wave with his magazine Cahiers du cinéma, would frequently mention this film alongside of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) and Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939) as works that redefined the cinema. So what is this film? Well, it can best be described as a film that documents the internal politics and power struggles within an early 20th century Southern aristocratic family. Regina Hubbard Giddens (played in a chilling performance by Bette Davis) engages in a scheme with her two brothers to marry off two of their cousins in order to consolidate enough capital to start a cotton mill. However, this involves getting Regina's sickly husband, Horace, to invest his railroad bonds. Since he refuses out of spite for her (the two have long since lost the flame that brought them together) Regina must use horrific tactics to blackmail, coerce, and dominate everyone around her in order to achieve her goals. As stated, the film is especially revered for its decoupage and cinematography. Wyler relies on a more traditional method of decoupage which is very nearly theatrical in its formalistic purity. The results are absolutely jaw-dropping. The film is especially notorious for a scene involving Regina, a heart-attack, and lonely set of stairs. The Little Foxes is indeed a powerful film displaying the height of Wyler's talents. I just hope that someday it can receive the recognition among the public that it so dearly deserves.

8/10