THE LITTLE FOXES

A nest of vipers in turn-of-the-century Alabama, the Hubbard family have made an art of turning every human relationship into a business transaction. Brothers Ben and Oscar are plotting to build a cotton mill that will make them rich on cheap labor, but they need one last investment to close the deal. Their sister Regina (Bette Davis) wants her cut, and the only thing standing between her and the money is her ailing, estranged husband Horace (Herbert Marshall), who has developed the inconvenient habit of possessing a conscience.

Adapted by Lillian Hellman from her own famously venomous play, THE LITTLE FOXES is a grand Southern family melodrama with poison in its bloodstream—a portrait of American capitalism conducted as domestic warfare, where marriages are hostile takeovers, children are bargaining chips, and absolutely everyone is waiting for somebody else to die. William Wyler directs with merciless precision, aided by Gregg Toland’s deep-focus photography, which turns the Hubbard mansion into a battlefield of foregrounds and backgrounds where the person doing nothing may be committing the most monstrous act of all.

“She is imperious and stylish, with a laugh like an open threat and an aversion to mansplaining. She is Bette Davis’s Regina Hubbard Giddens: the sharpest, funniest person in the room. Unfortunately she’s also a psychopath who presages the next 79 years of rapacious capitalism, but then you can’t have everything.” - Rick Burin, The Guardian