If you want to see great construction and great actors having fun with a wonderfully melodramatic script, rent this one.
Bette Davis plays Charlotte, who as a young girl is planning to run away with her married lover until her father finds out. He breaks things up and the lover ends it with Charlotte at a huge ball she and her father are throwing. He is then killed at the ball with a meat cleaver, his head and hand never found. Charlotte thinks her dad did it, and he thinks Charlotte did it. No-one is every charged. Charlotte closets herself in her mansion for almost 40 years with her maid Velma (Agnes Moorehead - OMG! She is so trashy in this role!). When the highway department seizes the property for the new highway, Charlotte has to leave, so she calls in her cousin Miriam (Olivia de Havilland). And then the shit really hits the fan.
This has a "Gaslight" type plot, which I love. Apparently the off-camera action was quite melodramatic as well, with Joan Crawford quitting and many other actresses (Vivien Leigh, Katherine Hepburn, etc.) declining the role. Bette Davis was a bitch to work with; but watch what she does on screen. It's insane.
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