Rent In This Our Life (1942)

3.8 of 5 from 70 ratings
1h 35min
Rent In This Our Life Online DVD & Blu-ray Rental
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Synopsis:
What Stanley Timberlake wants, she takes. So, on the eve of her marriage to another, she runs off with her sister's husband, the first of many betrayals that lead to disaster...and to a compulsively watchable brew of deceit, racial bigotry, latent incest and violent death.
Actors:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Directors:
Writers:
Howard Koch, Ellen Glasgow
Studio:
Warner
Genres:
Classics, Drama, Romance
Collections:
A Brief History of Films About Sisters, All the Twos: 1902-62, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Olivia de Havilland, Instant Expert's Guide to John Huston, A Brief History of Film..., The Instant Expert's Guide
BBFC:
Release Date:
16/07/2008
Run Time:
95 minutes
Languages:
English LPCM Mono
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Full Screen 1.37:1
Colour:
B & W
Bonus:
  • Commentary by Film Historian Jeanine Basinger
  • Warner Night at the Movies 1942 Short Subjects Gallery:
  • Vintage Newsreel
  • Technicolor Patriotic Short 'March On, America!'
  • Technicolor Musical Short 'Spanish Fiesta'
  • Classic Cartoon 'Who's Who in the Zoo'
  • Trailers of 'In This Our Life' and 1942's 'Desperate Journey'

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Reviews (2) of In This Our Life

Ahead of its time - In This Our Life review by areavie

Spoiler Alert
18/04/2018

This film has to be your ultimate crime drama, centring around a hit-and-run case and all the stigma that surrounds it in the early part of the century. Classic Davis plays the spoiled floosy who winds people around her little finger to get what she wants.

She pretty much succeeds too, with an ex-lover as an attorney and a rich influential uncle. A little persecution where she tries to shift blame for the offence to another person.

2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.

Curious Soap. - In This Our Life review by Steve

Spoiler Alert
24/11/2022

Bette Davis was always good when she was being bad, but here is poorly cast. She lack the looks her character is assumed to possess. She's ten years too old and wears so much makeup she's hard recognise. Davis plays a sociopathic monster who ruins her forgiving sister (Olivia de Havilland) by stealing her husband. After Davis compels him to suicide she comes back for Olivia's new fiancé...

The source novel won the Pulitzer Prize so perhaps it was more highbrow than this entertaining soap. This adaptation feels like the Hollywood southern melodramas of the fifties. There's a jazz soundtrack. The dichotomy between the good/bad sister is classic fifties. There is a corrupt, dying patriarch (Charles Coburn) who has a transgressive longing for his childlike niece. It's full of sexual innuendo.  

This was John Huston's second film and it's not typical of his work. Though maybe his liberal politics allowed for the more enlightened attitude to race, for the time. After the drunken bad girl kills a mother and child in a hit and run, she casually accuses an African American (Ernest Anderson) of taking the car. The film is explicit that her testament will be verified because she is white.

Amazingly the film wasn't allowed an overseas certificate because it represented USA as being racially biased! Possibly there is a much more intelligent film dormant within this production. What we get is a Bette Davis vehicle, and while she's grotesquely fascinating, this is not always for the intended reasons. It's an interesting, implausible curiosity.

0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.

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