“JEZEBEL”: THE GLAMOUR OF EVIL: Last week I saw “Jezebel,” which, rumor has it, is the film Bette Davis was given as a compensation prize for not being picked to play Scarlett O’Hara. (Quick DC note: I saw it at the newly-opened AFI Silver theater in Silver Spring, which was super-convenient for Metro riders, and not the world’s most wonderfully-designed movie palace but still quite good.) When I first left the theater I was underimpressed with the movie, but it grows on reflection.

“Jezebel” is basically a tearjerker. Davis plays Julie Marsten, a bitchy Southern belle who is unaccountably attractive to all and sundry despite pouting and whining and manipulating in the grand style. The movie is one long comeuppance.

There are two points of interest, both concerning the portrayal of the antebellum South. The South does not get the sweetness-‘n’-light treatment (although–argh, I hate to spoil–it does get redeemed in the end). The black characters are pure stereotype, grr, but the white characters are much more interesting. Davis is something of a synecdoche for her society–petty, willfully self-defeating, using “honor” purely as a tool to manipulate others, and trapped in her escapist memories of the past (“The moonlight in the magnolias, Pres, do ya ‘member?”). The implicit criticism of the Southern aristocracy was, I thought, more scathing and unforgiving than that of GWTW (a vastly superior film in general–“Jezebel” is something you should see if you want to watch a movie about the cinematic South, but GWTW is something you should see if you want to know about people). There are several scenes that play the South’s impending defeat as a self-inflicted catastophe–for example, the scenes in which the local lordlings refuse to protect New Orleans against yellow fever–which is also present in GWTW, but more of an undercurrent, and hedged around with more Southern self-justifications.

But the other fascinating thing about the movie is that the South is portrayed as both inscrutably evil, and attractive. Its danger, its jackdaw honor, its bloodthirst, its deep feudal alienation from Yankee society, its lurid emotions and its icily refined use of manners as stilettos–all are presented as equal parts repugnant and alluring. In “Jezebel” cruel and selfish people are attractive because they are cruel and selfish, not in spite of those traits.

Which strikes me as a cutting little commentary on fallen humanity. Of course, setting your story in the South has always been a convenient way for writers and filmmakers to displace questions of sin, violence, and class; but I don’t think “Jezebel” entirely lets the rest of us off the hook. It’s not just the South that gets eviscerated.