What Ever Happened To Baby Jane (1962)-English Movie starring Bette Davis, Joan Crawford

Sept 13, 2011 (Calcutta Tube): What Ever Happened To Baby Jane is a 1962 Hollywood English movie directed by Robert Aldrich with Joan Crawford, Bette Davis in lead roles. Davis and Crawford play sisters in this intense psychological thriller that takes sibling rivalry, envy, hatred, and different emotions of the human psyche to a totally new elevation.

[ReviewAZON asin="B000EU1Q4A" display="inlinepost"]Davis portrays Jane, a former child star. She is now forgotten and mentally unstable, has drinking problems. She is trapped into her childhood memories where she was such a huge star, that there was a Baby Jane doll named after her. Her sister Blanche was then envious of her. But with time things change dramatically. Blanche becomes a successful actress and the audience in oblivion of time forgot Baby Jane. But Blanche becomes crippled in an accident. Reportedly Jane was driving the car under the influence of alcohol and tried to kill her sister when Blanche was in the peak of her career.

Now the two sisters are trapped in a house and Jane is quite abusive with Blanche. She still dreams of reviving her lost stardom, and is unable to come out of her past. She is extremely jealous of her disabled sister, throws away any mails and flowers sent to her by fans, reads all her letters, and so on. She even tries to starve her to death. Is she aware of the consequences? She looks even too sick for that.

Jane’s sickness lead to abnormal things in the household; she gets worse every minute, starts committing crime and even murder. Can Blanche escape her sister? Or she will be killed just like the housekeeper? Will Blanche ever forgive her sister for all this foul play, for her accident? We keep wondering all throughout the film when surprisingly we discover the real cause of Blanche’s accident.

Jane turns out to be innocent! And Blanche not quite so! Jane was not driving the car that night. Who was it then? Who tried to kill Blanche?

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford both gave an outstanding performance and the film was nominated for five Oscar Nominations, and won the one for Best Costume Design.

The film is full of blood chilling scenes all through out.

The film was remade in 1991 as a television film starring Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, sisters in real life.