Tim Robey recommends... Dark Victory (1939) Dark Victory ought to be a bad Bette Davis vehicle - these do exist. Davis, in 1939, was the biggest star in the firmament. She'd just won her second Oscar for William Wyler's Jezebel, a performance that typifies her women from the period - wild, wilful, destructive, bitchy. In this, and her subsequent Wyler films The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941), she careened towards tragedy with self annihilating abandon, which is exactly what viewers then and now have always found most compelling about her. Waiting in the wings, though, was another Davis - a self-pitying, tear-jerking one, so sure in the love of her audience that she started to milk it shamelessly. You can see it in a movie like Mr Skeffington (1944), where she applies scads of ageing makeup, her appearance ravaged by diphtheria, to make us gasp. Even in this same year's The Old Maid, the warning signs are visible. Miraculously, Dark Victory avoids this pit-trap altogether, despite being about a vivacious Long Island heiress, Judith Traherne, who starts going blind from a brain tumour. It's the granddaddy, in its way, of the "disease of the week" movie, but the emotional arc of this classic women's picture is prouder than it is sentimental, more committed than sappy. Davis, and her director, Grand Hotel's Edmund Goulding, give it a sprightly kick in the ribs, treating the material like a reliable thoroughbred with some life in it yet. Scanning the cast list, you'd imagine Humphrey Bogart would be here to stand by Bette's side as she succumbs, but he was still paying his dues as a reluctant supporting player under contract to Warner Bros. His suitability as a flirtatious Irish stable hand is hard to see - all told, The Maltese Falcon (1940) didn't arrive a moment too soon. Davis is also distracted by the charms of Ronald Reagan, as a rakish alcoholic, but this even less promising screen partnership is never seriously entertained. The two important co-stars are the underrated George Brent, starring with Davis for the eighth time as Judith's kindly doctor, and Geraldine Fitzgerald, an Irish stage actress fresh to Hollywood, as her staunch best friend. After an emergency operation that gains Judith nothing but time, these two conspire to prevent her knowing about the fatal relapse that's coming. Judith misunderstands their complicity in different ways, first leaping to jealousy, then assuming Brent's offer of marriage is an act of pity. Reckless Bette shows her head around this point, as she dumps her allies, gets merrily sozzled, and sweeps through social gatherings with barely a word for anyone. No one is this good at spoiled, erratic behaviour. Goulding harnesses his star's gifts with just as much finesse, making Judith a person of second and third thoughts, coming out of various grief processes as a bigger person. She patches things up with Brent's and Fitzgerald's characters. The warmth and chemistry of these relationships gives the film its core. Compassion might be largely focused in her direction, but Dark Victory is the rare Davis vehicle in which her crucial decisions are made for others. No wonder it was her own favourite performance. Dark Victory is available on single-disc DVD from MGM or as part of the Bette Davis Collection from Warner Bros