Decent melodrama, with disturbing undertones and great production design. It's not really about the sisters - it starts off that way, with Bette Davis, Anita Louise and Jane Bryan all having romantic entanglements. But focus shifts to Davis and her relationship with dead-shit Errol Flynn.
The marriage is actually a very accurate depiction of an abusive relationship - he drinks, whines about his novel, has his masculinity threatened, she takes it because she loves him and he promises to get better and there's nowhere else to go. Flynn gives a fine performance - he's lifted by having doing scenes with Davis and also Donald Crisp.
Really his character should have died... he gets back with Davis at the end, in a scene that test audiences wanted. No doubt it inspired women to stay with their loser husbands who subsequently murdered them.
It is a shame that more time couldn't have been spent on the other sisters - or at least Louise, who has an interesting character (flirty, always looking for a new love, hooking up with old Alan Hale and incurring the wrath of his sister). I wasn't wild about the scene where they teamed up to help men drive a trampy woman out of town - I mean, Louise is pretty trampy isn't she?
I liked the election eves device, the recreation of the earthquake and the depiction of the brothel.
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