Bette Davis is great as always, leading a cast of sometimes-likeable people living in diseased social roles they'd rather die than abandon.

Lavishly produced but emotionally uninvolving because I had a hard time empathizing. I didn't particularly like the roles played by Fonda and Davis (an Oscar for this performance.. why not for Wyler's own 'The Letter' instead?); they're not exactly a couple you want to root for. Even less engaging are the social problems of the middle 19th century: Who the *insert profanity* cares what colour her *insert more* dress is?! With that out of my system, it's actually not a bad film - just not for me.

Davis is wonderful and brings the film up a notch, as do all the jabs at southern hypocrisy and cinema's glorification of the old south. Still, it doesn't completely surpass what it's trying to criticize and the romance plot has some issues, but overall pretty enjoyable.

The whole point of the movie was to show a fallen woman atoning for her sins. Its Julie, a southern belle forced to forsake her former careless lifestyle because of her crimes. And what exactly did she do? She disobeyed her man (fiance) and was generally selfish. Fortunately, at least we learn what needed to be done to avoid the tragedy. It's so simple - the fiance should have beat Julie for disobeying him (as it was suggested to him) at the very beginning. What a great message!

Good chick picture. Will make you very glad that you didn't live back in "the good old days"

When Wyler is on his A-Game He's great. What happened to him in the 50's? Nevertheless, this is a great film. Great cinematography, and a transcendent performance by Ms. Davis. You could hang those close-ups in the Louvre.

A deeply powerful film on the hypocrisy of values. William Wyler and the writers are geniuses. Accessible, yet with an undercurrent of wealth of implicit human and social themes. In many ways, I felt it dealt with the themes far better than Gone With The Wind, but with a more subtle approach. GWTW's extravagance won through in terms of rating; it felt the fuller and more engaging film. There's not many films that I can say are objectively underrated, but I believe Jezebel to be one of them.