--- title: "Jezebel" year: 1938 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/jezebel" fi1m_score: 78 critics_score: 57 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-19T23:57:36.212473+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T23:57:58.219829+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Jezebel (1938) Directed by William Wyler · 1h 43m · MPA NR · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 57 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* A woman wears the wrong colour to a party and a whole city takes it personally > Bette Davis and William Wyler build one of the great set pieces of the 1930s around a dress the wrong colour, and the rest of the film never quite recovers from having peaked at the ball. We would not miss it for that. ## Synopsis New Orleans, 1852. Julie Marsden (Bette Davis), a wealthy young woman with a plantation and no patience, is engaged to Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), a banker who would rather argue about the city’s drains and the coming yellow fever than escort her to the dressmaker. She arrives late to her own party in a riding habit and dares the crowd to object. Her aunt, Belle Massey (Fay Bainter), tries to keep the peace; her old admirer Buck Cantrell (George Brent) hovers, ready to fight anyone who slights her. When Pres keeps her waiting once more, Julie orders a red gown for the Olympus Ball, where unmarried women wear white, and insists on being taken to it. The city watches to see what he will do. ## Review New Orleans, 1852, and a young woman has ordered the wrong dress. That is the part of *Jezebel* that matters, and William Wyler knows it: the first half of his 103 minutes walks us towards one ballroom and the second half deals with what happened there. It is a fine film with a soft ending, and the ballroom is among the best things put on a screen in the 1930s. The reviews we have read are more divided than the film deserves. The notices of 1938 found it slow and its last act unearned; they are half right about the last act and wrong about the rest. The ball first, because everything else is measured against it. Unmarried women wear white to the Olympus Ball, and Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) has a red dress made to punish a fiancé who kept her waiting. The film is in black and white, so we never see the red; we take the crowd’s word for it. Ernest Haller lights the white gowns so they seem to glow on their own and sets Davis among them like a hole cut in the picture. Wyler empties the floor a couple at a time, mothers steering daughters away, until two people are waltzing alone in a large room with every eye on them, and Warren Low keeps returning to Davis’s face as she understands what she has done. Max Steiner’s waltz goes on because Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda) has told the orchestra to keep playing. We held our breath. It is a dance, in a film from 1938, and we held our breath. Davis is the reason the scene works and the reason the film does. She arrives late to her own party in a riding habit and hitches the skirt with her crop, and in that one gesture she has told us Julie thinks the rules are for other people. What she does not do is play a villain. Her Julie wants things and takes them, and Davis lets us see her checking Fonda’s face for the effect, so that every outrage is aimed at him and the film becomes a question of whether he will notice. It is a performance built on watching, and Wyler gives her the close-ups to do it in. Fonda has the harder part. Pres is a banker who wants New Orleans to dig drains before the fever comes, and the script by Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, Robert Buckner, Louis F. Edelman and John Huston gives him speeches about sanitation and little else. George Brent has more fun as Buck Cantrell, the duelling gentleman who adores Julie and knows he is second choice, and plays him as a man who has decided to be amused by it. Fay Bainter’s Aunt Belle is the film’s conscience, and Bainter plays every disappointment as tenderness; she is the one to watch when Davis is off screen. Donald Crisp’s Dr Livingstone delivers the fever warnings like a man who knows nobody is listening. Then there is the household. Theresa Harris has warmth and quickness as Zette, Julie’s maid, and the film gives her nothing to do with either. The enslaved servants and the plantation children are photographed as charming furniture, and there is a sequence of singing on the steps that the film means as local colour and that we found hard to sit through. Orry-Kelly dresses the white characters in crinolines that fill a doorway, and the people who dressed them are in the background of the shot. The second half takes the story out to the plantation and brings the yellow fever with it, and we will not say more than that. What we can say is that the script asks Davis, in the final reel, to turn Julie inside out in about ten minutes of screen time, and that we did not believe it. Davis plays the change with everything she has, and it is still a change the film has announced rather than earned. This is the one place where the critics of 1938 had it right. Two years later Wyler and Davis made *The Letter*, which opens on one long shot that tells you the whole story. *Jezebel* puts the same trust in one scene, and the scene repays it. Watch it for the ball, stay for Bainter, and be lenient with the last ten minutes. At 103 minutes it does not ask much of your evening, and the dance alone would pay for it. *Fi1m score 78, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (5) - **Empire**, David Parkinson (70/100, inferred): The critic finds Bette Davis captivating as the fiery Southern belle Julie in this 1938 melodrama, with strong support from Fay Bainter and technical excellence in camerawork, design, costumes and score. However, the script's melodramatic improbabilities in the climax undermine the film despite efforts by Wyler and John Huston. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/jezebel-review/) - **Time Out**, JCl (70/100, inferred): The review highlights the film's justly famous scarlet dress scene at the Lympus Ball as telescoping its central themes of social and sexual transgression. It describes how Julie's defiance threatens the social order and becomes associated with the fever and fires devastating the town. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/jezebel) - **Variety** (50/100, inferred): The film offers a convincing study of Southern chivalry and hospitality in 1852 New Orleans amid a yellow fever epidemic, with strong direction from William Wyler and notable performances, especially from George Brent. It falls short of full impact due to an anti-climactic plot and the sudden shift of Bette Davis’s character to noble sacrifice. [Read](https://variety.com/1937/film/reviews/jezebel-1200411639/) - **The New Yorker** (30/100, inferred): The lavish Southern melodrama with Bette Davis as a viperish belle fails to come alive despite rich production values, a strong cast including Henry Fonda and George Brent, and William Wyler’s direction. The plot drags, scenes do not land, and the character’s abrupt turn from troublemaker to martyr leaves viewers uninterested. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1938/03/19/1938-03-19-073-tny-cards-000039107) - **Eye for Film**, Jennie Kermode (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Bette Davis's central performance as bringing life to the familiar Southern melodrama through her chemistry with director William Wyler, but notes that it leaves the supporting cast looking anaemic and the romance unsteady. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/jezebel-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) ## Details - **Director:** William Wyler - **Director:** William Wyler - **Screenplay:** John Huston, Robert Buckner, Abem Finkel, Clements Ripley, Louis F. Edelman - **Cinematography:** Ernest Haller - **Editor:** Warren Low - **Music:** Max Steiner - **Costume design:** Orry-Kelly - **Producer:** William Wyler - **Cast:** Bette Davis as Julie Marsden; Henry Fonda as Preston Dillard; George Brent as Buck Cantrell; Margaret Lindsay as Amy Bradford Dillard; Donald Crisp as Dr. Livingstone; Fay Bainter as Aunt Belle Massey; Richard Cromwell as Ted Dillard; Henry O'Neill as General Theopholus Bogardus - **Runtime:** 1h 43m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 26 March 1938 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance - **Budget:** $1 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQJJyYGQqek ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1939: Best Cinematography (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Score, Adaptation or Treatment (nominated); Best Actress (won); Best Supporting Actress (won) ## If you liked this - *The Letter* (1940), Fi1m 78: Wyler and Davis again, tighter and darker, with an opening shot that settles everything. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-letter.md) - *The Heiress* (1949), Fi1m 90: Wyler on a plain woman and a staircase; the most patient cruelty he ever filmed. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-heiress.md) - *Gone with the Wind* (1939), Fi1m 74: The Southern belle at full scale, in colour, and twice the length; you know the drill. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/gone-with-the-wind.md) - *The Earrings of Madame de...* (1953): Ophüls waltzes a vain woman towards ruin and never once stops the camera moving. - *Senso* (1954): Visconti’s countess wrecks herself for a worthless man in the most beautiful rooms in Italy. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/jezebel