What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

An elegant, tightly controlled depiction of sisterly sadism, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) is rarely as quirky and uninhibited as its standout central performance: Bette Davis as Baby Jane Hudson. The Rob Aldrich-directed psychological thriller follows former child star, Baby Jane Hudson and her more successful though now-crippled actress sister, Blanche (Joan Crawford) in their large yet claustrophobic Hollywood mansion. The film progresses as a torture mechanism by which Baby Jane, motivated by jealousy and insanity, perpetrates increasingly extreme acts of psychological and physical abuse against Blanche. Blanche's half-hearted escape attempts only intensify Baby Jane's acts of cruelty, which include now-iconic Grand Guignol gags that have inspired countless music videos and become a part of the cultural vernacular. Aldrich's directing subtly invokes Baby Jane's identity crisis through mirrors and the placement of objects from Baby Jane's days as a child star, though he largely lets the camera breathe around Davis' rich performance. The justly Oscar-nominated turn reveals Baby Jane as a has-been so poisoned by alcoholism, narcissism, and jealousy that elaborate cruelty becomes her only means to connect to herself as a performer. (Note Davis' evocation of Baby Jane's dramatic relish and rigor while maliciously impersonating Blanche on the telephone). Blanche, meanwhile, is more one-dimensional, a victim whose glory days fail to inspire her resistance against her captor. To be fair, the mystery revealed at the ending sheds a superficial light on Blanche's passiveness and seeming masochism, but the film frustrates in its denial of agency to Blanche and the other sympathetic characters in the film, including a refreshingly smart black maid character. Davis' Baby Jane dominates the film -- and the people within it -- admirably, but ultimately does not face enough resistance, be it in the form of inside-Hollywood context or strong-willed opposing characters, to balance the barrage of psychological torture Blanche- and we, the audience, endure.