Jezebel

In New Orleans in 1852 Julie Marsden is the most talked-about young woman in the city, and to punish her fiancé she wears red to the ball instead of white. It does not go as she planned; he leaves her and returns years later married. At the same time yellow fever enters the city. William Wyler's film won Bette Davis an Oscar, and the ball scene entered the textbooks for making the audience feel the red despite being in black and white, with everyone in white and Julie the single dark stain. The part came immediately after Davis lost Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, and the comparison has run ever since. The hardest thing about it now is the way it uses slavery as background decoration. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood melodrama and Bette Davis. Who it is not for: anyone unable to overlook the film's portrait of the South.