Admirable film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Let's jump straight to the point: we're all here for Bette Davis, and, for all intents and purposes, we stay the whole 118 minutes solely because of Bette Davis.Mrs. Davis began her rise to prominence in Hollywood by challenging the notions surrounding what an A-List movie-star should look like, and sealed her fate by simply being better than everyone else around her, all the time. I've always had a personal reverence for her, as I've found time and time again that many actors can give great, excellent, truly inspiring performances - but only a few can accurately be described as a vision on screen, and only a tiny fractions of them can truly be considered to have the raw talent necessary in order to act circles around every single one of their wildly talented cohorts that help make their great films possible.Bette Davis was one of these visionaries. Not only was she one of them, but she very well might have been the best of them as well. The word "vision" doesn't even begin to describe her in this film. From beginning to end, her performance is sincere, her actions are believable, and her struggles are deeply moving, through and through.In a way, this film reminds me of Delbert Mann's Marty. Both films depict ordinary folks just trying to be happy, being pushed around and kept from it by the people who supposedly love them, and finally finding happiness, grace, and solace through purity of the heart and emotion long suppressed by the outside forces at work. Both films represent a brutal truth and a refreshing take on humanity from an otherwise deliriously optimistic era of cinema, ones that are about as honest and pointedly forthright as they are complete accurate and deeply relatable. As someone who has often turned to solitude and even isolation in the face of his own inability to function adequately around others and generally within human society at large, these films move me in a way others fail to, and the feeling of being given a voice, something that rarely happens for people in my position, is truly a remarkable thing, something that should be cherished and appreciated when they rarely come around. The problem is, the film is just... way too much. The coincidences are too contrived, and there's just way more heart-string pulling and swoon-inducing fluff for the simple script to realistically handle. What's perfectly believable, and remarkably poignant, is for a young woman, beaten into emotional submission by cruel, woefully inconsiderate family members and needled by the unbearable nature of this existence, being saved by common sense psychological practitioning, and finally being able to blossom into the beautiful, confident woman who for far too long stayed shrouded in the despair from which she believed she could never break free of. What's more difficult to believe is that on her first voyage alone she takes in an overbooked passenger that just so happens to be a handsome man, that she gets into a cliffside-automobile accident with him and is forced to spend the night under the stars with him, that they fall in love, that he has a daughter going through the exact same torment she endured as a child, that they met at a party weeks/months later because he just so happened to be in town on business with mutual associates of theirs, that her daughter just so happened to be at the refuge at the same time she checked herself in a week later, that they bonded before she learned that she was indeed the man's daughter, and so on and so forth. These overwrought narrative concurrences work only to take away from the poignant realism the film was previously doing so well, and instead plunges it into the very cliques the film had worked so hard to refute.If this film had instead been only 80 or so minutes in length, if they had only briefly included the girl at the end (who did a very good job for a girl her age, despite her place in the movie) instead of expanding the movie with an additional 40 minutes of Bette Davis/that girl bonding, camping, inspirational happy-fun-time, maybe I would be sitting here giving it 9 or 10 stars instead of 7.However, while the film has its flaws, its still a good picture, and the fact that it is is very much thanks to Mrs. Bette Davis - who was, after all, one of the greatest to have ever lived.

Well-made but dull."Now, Voyager" is essentially a movie-length soap opera. Has all the ingredients: over-stated melodrama, complex relationships, high society and their weird mores, idyllic settings, forbidden romances and a nagging, fascist mother. From the outset the movie just feels stuffy, and superficial.Good production though, despite the dialogue feeling so much like a play. Max Steiner won an Oscar for his musical score.The acting goes with the play/soap opera feel: over-stated emotions, exaggerated portrayals.

The Warner Brothers release "Now, Voyager" ranks as one of the greatest 'make-over' movie in cinematic history. Director Irving Rapper's classic black & white romantic melodrama represents a splendid example of a movie whose theme is women versus women. Women make more trouble for women in this soap operatic saga. A young, impressionable woman named Charlotte Vale suffers under the relentless tyranny of her misguided mother Mrs. Henry Vale who has planned Charlotte's very move, right now to marriage to the man appropriate to her social station in life. Charlotte is withering away under her mother's dictatorial foot when salvation arrives in the person of a pipe-smoking Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains of "Casablanca") who convinces Charlotte's mother to allow him to treat her at his sanitarium. Mrs. Vale relents and allows Jaquith to take Charlotte into his care. Surprising enough, Charlotte erupts from a cocoon of deprivation and blossoms into a young woman. Against Mrs. Vale's wishes, Charlotte is allowed to board a cruise ship and experience life. She becomes the toast of the cruise ship and meets a lonely husband, Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid of "Casablanca"), and the two of them become lifelong friends. At one point during the cruise, Charlotte and Jerry smoke cigarettes. This scene supposedly started a practice for the man to light both cigarettes and hand one to the woman. This is just one of the many Bette Davis movies that everybody needs to watch.

The definition of a Woman's Picture, as was. It's basically all that would be required nowadays too but sadly it usually best works with a sprinkling of soft porn to rope the ladies in, er as in Fifty Shades Of Grey so to speak. This expert film can even to hold the guys to the end, through the layers of soap and tripe to the climactic Give and Take annihilation of reason and the triumph of corn.Mentally repressed woman Bette Davis under mother Gladys Cooper's bony thumb first with the help of psychiatrist Claude Rains and then with married lover Paul Henreid eventually asserts her independence and blossoms as a person, and of course as a Woman which is more important. It's a masterclass in emotional cinema and tenuous logic – they're right when they say this couldn't be remade successfully: the down-to-earthy realism and intolerance to cigarette smoking nowadays and also the lack of seemingly untouchable stars, a Max Steiner to supply a suitably heart-stirring score, a dreamy gleamy nitrate black and white photography, and soft Warner Bros production values will all see to that.It's all rather wonderful to watch, and to wonder if you really are closer to your feminine side watching and digesting the labyrinthine plot. The cast, especially Davis are almost perfect in their melodrama. The money shots are just before and after Henreid (and Steiner) ask "Shall we have another cigarette on it?" – if you're not affected by the emotional conclusion and trite resolution of non sequiturs then you must surely have a screw in place!