Bette Davis

Four separate critics in the archive reach for Bette Davis's performances as a yardstick. Peter Matthews takes a part of Julianne Moore's for the finest display of female Machiavellianism since Davis reigned in The Little Foxes. The same writer, on another film, finds a performer's make-up more cadaverous than hers in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? John Wrathall, saying a film mirrors Now, Voyager, calls that one a Bette Davis classic. Kay Dickinson faults a role of Meryl Streep's for carrying less feminist spirit than Davis in The Corn Is Green, reaching, in that same sentence, for Robin Williams and Sidney Poitier as measures too.