Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Nanny (1965)

Aunt Pen (Jill Bennett): Nanny, what are you doing?

Nanny (Bette Davis): I'm taking Master Joey an extra pillow... what are you doing up so late?

Aunt Pen: I couldn't sleep, I'm going to make a cup of tea.

Nanny: It's bad for you this late at night... you go back to bed and I'll bring you a glass of milk.

Aunt Pen: I don't want a glass of milk, I want a cup of tea.

Nanny: Alright.

Aunt Pen: Nanny, don't take Joey that pillow... he'll never go back to sleep.

[pause] You don't approve of pillows, I remember you saying when we were small 'children shouldn't have pillows'. What was that word you used? Overlay, they might overlay themselves. .... Suffocate.

I liked The Nanny when I watched it last week for the first time, but you know what it's biggest flaw is? Bette Davis is just too damn good for it. That is to say, the movie needs someone who won't make Nanny so real. The balance is all out of whack. I was in Nanny's corner from start to finish, and wanted to see that little brat Joey get what was coming to him even once the true story revealed itself. Hell, even more then. And then Bette Davis' performance just gets better and better and more and more depressing in the last fifteen minutes and you end up leving the movie feeling monstrously sad. This puts me in a weird predicament, because the movie's really not clever enough to live up to what Bette Davis is giving, so I find myself thinking it might've been a more successful film if she had been a little less wonderful. More likely though is that there would be no reason to even watch the movie now at all in a post-Hand That Rocks the Cradle world without Bette's lovely little depressing performance.