Memorable, crazy movie

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

I have read the book and seen this movie many times. Potentially, Bette Davis was an inspired choice for the mademoiselle. Much is being made that Bette is playing against type, a "quiet gentle" character, but she's gone there before. I love this movie cause it gives me lots of Charles Boyer who practically shimmers in his romantic longing.Boyer being such a natural on screen only brings out the mannered and almost lazy approach of B. Davis. I've seen her speak naturally before without the clipping she developed and the hand which appears glued to her torso and folded in the most unappealing prissy way. Why oh why couldn't the director or Davis herself direct her properly for this role. The sour facial expressions (like she just drank a gallon of grapefruit juice) are annoying as heck.Despite these issues the potential was there. When she lets go of her acting ticks her luminous eyes and common sense manner work well as the intelligent governess. As it is, I overlook much of her and concentrate on the brilliant Charles Boyer and wonderful Barbara O'Neil who is right on target as the hysterical wife. In the book, Fanny De Praslin is even worse.

Although a fan of Bette Davis', and of old movies in general, somehow I had never seen this film. What a treat it was to finally see it.It is an extremely well done period piece. The story stems from a new French teacher who has a scandal in her past, which the are aware of. They attempt to humiliate the new teacher (Davis), but she instead tells them her story. And it's a humdinger.I've never been a particular fan of Charles Boyer, but he is excellent here as the patriarch of the family to which Bette Davis (in a bravura performance) becomes governess. The matriarch of the family is clearly mentally ill and manipulative. I couldn't place her at first, and then realized that she was Scarlett O'Hara's mother in GWTW. She (Barbara O'Neill) is excellent here, and was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar. Harry Davenport is one of my favorite character actors, but I don't think his servant role is right for him here, though key to the story line.The setting for the scenes on All Hallow's Eve are ethereal and as spooky as you'll ever see.Although the course of the plot is somewhat predictable -- easy to guess that Boyer will kill his wife -- this is one film where the question in your mind is what specific event will lead him to do so, and that sustains the suspense. The outcome of the murder, however, surprised me! Interestingly, this is based on a true story of an event that helped lead to the 1848 Revolution in France. Read the Wikipedia summary to learn that it's possible the real life story had a different ending that we would probably think was too fantastic if it had been part of this film! It's extremely rare that I give a film a "9", but this one is well deserving. Highest recommendation!A very good summary of the real life of Bette's character can be found at findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=37793248. A summary of the real Duke's life can be found on Wikipedia.

The film "All this and Heaven Too", from 1940, and directed by Anatole Litvak is a true love story. Madamusel Deluzy is a young woman that is alone in the world trying to find her way. She lands a job as a governess for the prominent Duc and Duchesses and their four beautiful children. Deluzy is a very kind hearted woman that is great with the children and gets along very well except for the one main person that she needs too, the Duchesses. The Duchesses feels that in the time that Deluzy has been employed in her home, she has been able to steal all the love and affection from her children and husband that she deserves. The Duchesses refuses to see that all this affection she is claiming to have stolen from her was gone way before the governess was there. The Duchesses is a very over dramatic woman that thinks everything going wrong in her life is someone else's fault, but none of it her own. While she sits locked in her room away from the rest of the house, it is true that the Duc and Governess are becoming closer as friends by way of the children. The Duc is a good father that wants to be there during some of their studies, causing him to in turn spend time with her. Everyone that isn't in the situation and is simply looking in thinks that there is more to them then just friendship. By the end, the governess is actually thrown out of the home when the Duchesses bluntly accused Deluzy of stealing away the Duc her. She leaves with no fight, and continues on with her life, but never forgets about what was there. The truth is she did fall in love with the Duc, and the Duc had fallen in love with her. The both of them had too much respect for the children to ever do something about it and make them suffer from the decisions they had made. I really enjoyed this movie. It was very well written, but the acting of Betty Davis really pulled everything together and made the audience feel the love & pain that she was going through.

How do you give a character charisma? Make her go through a preexisting scandal, but don't reveal anything about it other than it being bad and compare it to gossipers who show no tolerance towards the person because of it. This movie has one of the most emotional introductions I have ever seen in a movie. If there was any scene where Bette Davis shined as an actress, it was in the first 10 minutes. I knew nothing about her by that point and I was ready to cry. You can tell that this is a tragedy because it starts out after something bad apparently happened, but what sets this above tragedies like Grave Of The Fireflies and Romeo And Juliet is that it doesn't say that they die or it doesn't say what happens other than something bad happened. It builds suspense, but once it becomes clear how it happens the viewer waits for it to happen with no more surprises. All This And Heaven Too only says something really really bad happened, which can really mean anything. So it can get to a point where you think it couldn't get any worse and you assume that there is only resolutions left. Then something happens to make things even worse. It's brilliant how the movie creates such great plot twists that are as quick as they are comfortable with good lead-ins which start with a great introduction that makes you love Bette Davis's character almost instantly.One of the best things besides the plot points is the dialog. It's one of the most interesting screenplays I have heard from the 1940's. The dialog feels structured, but not too structured like a free verse poem. It falls somewhere between William Shakespeare and Joss Whedon with its cookie cutter dialog that draws the viewer in by believing that every bit of dialog is as important as the rest. With so many small details in movies, it is nice to feel compelled to focus on them. It also makes anyone look like a good actor, no matter how good or bad that actor truly is.Another good thing about the movie was great us of fade-ins and fade-outs. It also did a great job of using lighting. There was one specific shot where Bette Davis was trying to help a sick child and the light shined on her brightly in contrast to the background which was completely black making the scene feel like it was her being an angel protecting the child from the bad scenario surrounding them.The framing also focused on people by zooming in or zooming out to get the viewer ready to feel like they are seeing things from one person's perspective.There was so much I loved about the movie, there couldn't be anything wrong with it. Right? I didn't give it a 10. It has two flaws I can think about.1-The movie felt like it was too much. It needed to be 2.5 hours, but I felt like there was so much movie I was experiencing in each minute that I was getting tired by the end. I still loved it, but I would've been very satisfied with 1.5 hours.2-The biggest flaw in the whole movie was the sound editing. It was bad! I know in 1940, it wasn't easy for people to edit sound exactly to one frame, but there were at least 20 times when dialog was off by 1 second. It was like watching a kung fu movie. I was waiting for Bette Davis to beat up the Duchess with some Chinese Boxing moves. It was disappointing because I found so much to love about the movie, but the sound editing became distracting.I still would recommend this movie to a lot of people. It's rare I find a movie with this good of a narrative and story as well. The end was good too.