everything you need to know

 

Bette Davis

        in The Letter

In My Life in Pictures, Jerry Hall writes about working with iconic designer Karl Lagerfeld:

-------------- [excerpt] -------------- Karl will say, 'O.K., you're Bette Davis in The Letter', and if you've seen it you know exactly what he wants.  That's the one thing I said to my daughters; you've got to watch all the old Hollywood movies because they really did glamour and everything you need to know about modelling is in there.

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-------------------- [Filmsite Movie Review]

        The film's credits play above drawings of a tropical plantation company's compound on a sultry, moonlight night with banks of clouds in the sky.  

The setting of the film is a tropical Malayan rubber plantation (a sign reads L Rubber Co., Singapore, Plantation No. 1).  

The film's startling opening presents the film as a mystery - it is one of the most famous opening sequences ever produced.  

A tracking shot moves down a rubber tree where the precious substance drips into containers, across a thatched hut where native laborers listen to musicians, doze, and play games after their day's work.  

As the camera moves further up and right, it passes an exotic white cockatoo.  

In the background is the veranda of a colonial bungalow.  

One gunshot from inside the bungalow unexpectedly disturbs the silence, and the cockatoo.  The bird flutters and flies off.

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