Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Critic James Agee, when reviewing the film in 1944, felt it was an overwrought story made to manipulate female moviegoers. Not sure if I agree with his assessment, but I do think Bette Davis is miscast as a gorgeous woman. It would have worked better with someone like Vivien Leigh or Gene Tierney-- any actress whose beauty was obvious and too striking to ignore. Or perhaps someone like Ingrid Bergman would have done an excellent job. And maybe in place of Rains, they could have reunited her with Boyer. Joan Fontaine (in Warners' remake of THE CONSTANT NYMPH a year earlier) might also have been acceptable.But Davis just does not work for me in this role. In NOW, VOYAGER she starts as an ugly duckling and we know that even despite her metamorphosis, she still has all those ugly insecurities inside-- that's sort of what bonds her to the young girl later on in the picture. However, in MR. SKEFFINGTON there is not supposed to be any doubt that she's a confident and alluring woman. I feel what we get here is play-acting, a vainglorious actress in a less- than-noble attempt to play a great screen siren. It's just not believable at all, no matter how much they dress her up.

I will not write another review of "Mr. Skeffington" since this has already been done, and well done too I might add, by other users. I won't go on about the fact that the film is extremely well done, and one of Bette Davis' best performances in a distinguished career.I always find it fascinating, however, to think about the character who ends up getting his or her comeuppance and learning their lesson, as Mrs. Skeffington does, and ask "what if." Although I know that she receives a much needed lesson in values and priorities, so that by the end of the film she understands what is truly important, I always feel some measure of sympathy for the character.Vain, unfaithful and perhaps calculating though she might be, she is not without pathos and depth -- even in the beginning -- since her actions are motivated by the love of another, however misplaced. In attempting to help her brother, misguided though some might think it, she shows a willingness to help someone and to make a considerable sacrifice out of sisterly devotion.Ultimately, when she gets sick and loses her looks, it is ironically cruel that the last man she dated ends up marrying her daughter; this always felt a shade too mean for my taste, although I accept the action as part of the whole of a great classic movie. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that there should have been more dialog about this since it strikes me as a potentially incestuous betrayal by the daughter to the mother.Once again, I do not discount or disagree with the general view about the film and its characters, but Mrs, Skeffington always elicited more sympathy from me than is perhaps usual among the movie's fans, even if she may not deserve it.Definitely worth watching!!!

Bette Davis is my favorite actress, yet there are a few of her performances I don't care for and this is one. It's unsubtle and verges on caricature. She portrays a shallow, self-centered society beauty as a strangely grotesque, unattractive creature. Instead of playing up the charm and loveliness that is supposed make Fanny an irresistible woman, and letting us figure out from the dialog and situations that she is self absorbed and shallow, she plays the shallowness and narcissism in such an outward manner that it becomes unbelievable that anyone could possibly find such a woman attractive. It's not a terrible performance, it's just a miscalculation; nonetheless it wrecks the believability of the film.It's true that Bette Davis was not the great beauty she's asked to portray in this film, and that, too, renders her performance unbelievable. It doesn't matter how many times it's stated that Fanny is beautiful, what we see is a very attractive woman who is nonetheless not one of the great beauties. It just doesn't work.Still, Bette could at least have made the character such an attractive and charming person that it would be easy to understand why men fall in love with her. That's not really enough for this particular character, who is supposed to be drop dead gorgeous, but it would have helped. Bette in The Great Lie, for example, was a totally lovely girl you couldn't help finding attractive. Playing the artificiality of the character to the hilt, complete with an annoying, high, sing-song voice, affected delivery, and jittery mannerisms, Bette completely fails to show why Fanny was the belle of New York. Around this time, Hal Wallis had departed Warner Bros. and the studio's product showed a marked decline in taste and quality. Wallis had personally produced many of Bette's greatest triumphs; without him at the helm, her films began to slide, artistically. I don't think Wallis would have allowed Bette to make many of the choices she made here.I think this picture was a big hit, and it's pretty entertaining. It's not boring and you'll watch it to the end. But it doesn't have greatness, so don't expect that.Claude Rains is well cast as Job Skeffington. He gives a very fine performance. The other men in Fanny's life are mostly great actors: Walter Abel, Jerome Cowan, etc. British actor Richard Waring, who plays Fanny's brother, Trippy, had made a hit in The Corn Is Green on Broadway and, following his appearance in Mr. Skeffington, was set to play opposite Miss Davis in the film version. Warners had plans for him, but World War II intervened and he never returned to the studio, though he had a long stage and film career anyway.

This movie while dated is quite an acting job by Davis. There are several things about it which make it quite worthwhile. What I found interesting might be different than others though I did note some interesting things.The time line of the film from before World War 1 through World War 2 is interesting considering that being released in 1944, World War 2 wasn't over with yet. The film not only does not address the end of the War even though the story certainly goes beyond it, but the film does hint that the filmmakers were anti Jewish.A more subtle scene has Claude Rains giving his daughter a little Sambo doll. This is a small hint of racism which places the film square in the 1944 time frame for sure. It is amazing to me how racism last through World War 2 but you have to remember that the party running the country then (FDR & Democrats) was the same party which supported slavery going into our own Civil War.Betty Davis plays a woman here who is so vain about her looks that she can't love anybody. The film makes an early reference to the fact that her latest group of beaus were only there because she had dismissed a previous ones. All the men didn't seem to care that she treated them all like furniture, they still to propose to her. In real life this value still exists in some women. They are so stuck on themselves that they don't care about others feelings.Davis & her Brother were from a rich family, but a family now broke. The brother steals money from Mr Skeffington (Claude Rains) during his employment with him. Davis meets Skeffington while finding out about the theft. When Skeffington becomes the first man to be oblivious of her looks, & in order to save her brother from arrest, Davis character responds by going to meet him- a first in a life of a woman who has always had the men come to her.When she marries him, the brother resents it as he feels she only did it to help him. This destroys the brother & sisters relationship. Meanwhile Skeffington shows the patience of a God putting up with a wife that doesn't love him. Luckily he gets a daughter out of it & when they divorce, his wife is so wrapped up in herself that she lets him have custody of their daughter.When the daughter returns, mom suddenly takes ill, & she takes his latest beau away from her mom & marries him. Make no mistake though, this film is strictly a Davis starring vehicle. Everybody else is support including Claude Rains. Still, Davis is plenty great to carry this film. Rains & the supporting cast are kind of a bonus.History is often given a short shrift here, but this movie isn't about historic events. It is more a soap about attitudes like Gone With The Wind very often was only in this one, there is more Davis & less of the supporting players. Still it is a good film- it just has a Warner Brothers budget so it can't rise to anything beyond the assembly line it was produced on.