🎥 The Letter - 1940 - Bette Davis - 🎥 FULL MOVIE

✅ The Story ...

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Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a British rubber plantation manager in Malaya, shoots dead Geoffrey Hammond, a well-known member of the expatriate community.

Leslie tells the servant to send for the new district officer and her husband Robert, who is loading rubber for shipment. Crosbie returns, delivered by his attorney, a close family friend.

Leslie claims that she killed Hammond to save her honour. She is placed under arrest, jailed in Singapore, and charged with murder.

Her eventual acquittal seems a foregone conclusion, as the white community not only believes her story but feels she had acted heroically.

Only the attorney, Howard Joyce, harbours suspicion. His clerk, Ong Chi Seng, tells him a letter exists that Leslie wrote to Hammond the day of the shooting, imploring him to come that night while Robert was away.

Ong tells Joyce that the original is in the possession of Hammond's widow, a Eurasian woman who lives in the Chinese quarter. He shows Joyce a copy, revealing Leslie's clear culpability in her ex-lover's murder, and conveys that the original is for sale, at a staggering price.

Joyce then confronts Leslie, who first denies then breaks down and confesses to having written it. She manipulates him into agreeing to buy it back despite the risk to his career.

Joyce tells Robert about the letter without divulging its content or true price, which will bankrupt Robert. Ong informs Joyce that Hammond's widow demands Leslie come personally to make the payoff, so Joyce arranges for the court to have her released into his custody to "regain her health".

In the Chinese quarter, Leslie obtains the letter from the angry widow. She is acquitted.

In the aftermath of the trial, Robert announces to Leslie and Joyce that he plans to buy a rubber plantation in Sumatra to give him and Leslie a fresh start. It will require all his savings, plus a mortgage, but he can hardly contain his excitement.

Joyce informs him of the true cost of the letter, which Robert insists on reading. He is devastated to learn that Leslie had lied about the killing and had been unfaithful to Hammond for years.

As a party celebrating the acquittal gets underway, Leslie discovers a dagger on her porch which she recognizes from the shop where she retrieved the letter. Immediately aware of the implication, she nevertheless joins the party before retreating to her room to lose herself in her lacework

Robert brags to his friends about his Sumatran fantasy but collapses in gin and misery and offers to forgive Leslie if she can swear her love to him.

She does, but then abruptly confesses that she still loves Hammond?!

The action unfolds ...

✅ Credits :

Directed by : William Wyler
Screenplay by : Howard E. Koch
Based on : 1927 play The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham
Produced by : Hal B. Wallis
Cinematography : Tony Gaudio
Edited by : George Amy and Warren Low
Music by : Max Steiner
Distributed by : Warner Bros.
Release Date : November 22, 1940

✅ Cast :

Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie
Herbert Marshall as Robert Crosbie
James Stephenson as Howard Joyce
Frieda Inescort as Dorothy Joyce
Gale Sondergaard as Mrs Hammond
Bruce Lester as John Withers
Elizabeth Earl as Adele Ainsworth
Cecil Kellaway as Prescott
Sen Yung as Ong Chi Seng
Doris Lloyd as Mrs Cooper
Willie Fung as Chung Hi
Tetsu Komai as Head Boy

✅ Film Information Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Letter_(1940_film)

✅ Copyright Protected :

ALL RIGHTS TO THIS MOVIE REMAIN WITH THE OWNERS

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