Based on Somerset Maugham’s play, The Letter opens with one of the most striking sequences in classic Hollywood: Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) calmly firing a gun into a man outside her plantation home. Claiming self-defense, Leslie appears poised and truthful — until a letter surfaces that suggests a deeper, far more compromising relationship with the dead man.
As her lawyer works to protect her and suppress damning evidence, the tension mounts amid lies, jealousy, and colonial moral codes. William Wyler’s taut direction and Bette Davis’s icy, complex performance elevate the film into one of the great noir-tinged melodramas of its era.
