Bette Davis stars in the 1958 suspense drama "Fraction of a Second," about a mother who is tricked into thinking she is mentally ill, co-starring Marian Seldes, Linda Watkins, and Tita Purdom. From a story by Daphne Du Maurier.
This is the reason I stick in watching old movies because they make more sense and they always have a meaning or something to teach. Bette Davis one of the best actresses!
The cat lady played the piano player's mother in "Baby Jane" a few years later. These old generic TV dramas that nobody ever heard of are PRICELESS for Bette Davis fans. Thank you so much for uploading!
I saw this on TV when it aired. I was 6, never forgot it but didn’t remember it starred Bette! Thought it was called The Split Second which was the Daphne du Maurier story it was based on, and thought it was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Finally tracked it down today! Thanks for posting!
Thanks for the upload. I enjoyed this movie very much. I personally don't care that the captioning was off. I'm just grateful that I can watch these old movies for free. Many thanks!
What a class act she was. Her cadence of saying lines is very unique. I have to deliberately not look at captions because the translations are so messed up. Rather funny.
@@PetroicaRodinogaster264 Although you are grammatically correct, your comment was unnecessary. To me, Bette Davis was very unique ( over the top unique ) IMO
Captions in many cases are so inaccurate. Truly I feel sorry for the deaf. To me it's. A BAD thing. Very CAREless. A few words can basically mess everything thing up !!!!!! Julie kilburn
Her cadence is so distinct that she played every character in the same. That’s why she was such a target of mimics and comedians and drag queens for years upon years because she’s easy to imitate and make fun of.
What a jewel this was to watch. I'd never even heard of it. I am such a Huge fan of the incomparable Bette Davis. She was the finest actress there ever was. Thanks for posting this. It was most compelling.
I just listened rather than watched so that they didn't annoy me. The subtitles must have been made voice generated before they were perfected ad they are now in 2021
I read that Bette Davis wanted to back out of this because something happened to her face during a fight with her husband. My poor Bette 😭 She had to do it under such circumstance and she gave it her all. She always gave her finest performance.
Bette Davis is always a pleasure to find and see, even in some long forgotten cheesy tv ghost drama from the 50's. The thing about a good ghost story is that it still has to make some sense; this one doesn't. 20 years is not such a long time for the police and city records, especially in a small town, for everyone to realize pretty quickly that some ghostly phenomenon was happening.
The embedded subtitles are TERRIBLE! I can't keep from reading them and they are completely WRONG! OMG!!! Perhaps they are attempting to gaslight us into insanity like they did Bette Davis???
@Alan Eichler the subtitles are in the print? Where did you get this film ? At a foreign school for practice in English translation? Oh, well. Can't do much about such abominable translation except register annoyance and trust that any foreign language students don't get utterly confused.
@Tanya Brown Oh no! I pray you did not watch this movie and attribute the sub titles to what was actually being said. If so you are now probably in a home for the mentally deranged. Driven crazy by this insane translation which is actually quite funny and could be a whole different movie about schizophrenia.
Love Bette. Classic retro productions. My faves are black and white. My "grey movies". Several comments regarding this film, highlight convoluted nonsensical captions. However, I easily resolved by simply tapping the settings in upper right hand corner, to properly readjust accordingly. You choose "On" in "English" & Tap ok. The proper real-time captions, in English, perfectly matched to the actors speaking, overide the misplaced captions. It was an instant fix. All good. And I was certainly not distracted by the initial captions, because I focused on the movie. I wasn't reading the captions, until I reviewed the comments. I instantly thought to check settings. Voila!! Every word fell into perfect place. I actually, always check settings for each. Sometimes I don't want Captions. But to fix this glitch, you must turn on captions & language. Odd but def corrects. Lol, to all who kept watching with silly captions. Lol. Some laughed & said hilarious. But others were aggravated. Lose the stress. Adjust, if you have the options. Enjoy!!!
It is amazing that you knew how to change the captions so that they matched. I did enjoy the incongruity but it is interesting to know how to correct them.
Beyond the Forest is one of her movies that is hard to find but if you have Roku you can watch it free. Its on one of the free classic movie channels. Roku opened the door for some many older movies from a list of many stars. On one channel they have a list of stars and many movies from each star in a list free to watch.
I found this channel only recently, so glad I did! Bless your heart for sharing this and all the other videos. I don't have a credit card and finding really great things for free is just heavenly.
Bette was absolutely fantastic, just like every role she did. But the story dosnt stand up. Shame. A let down in the end. I will try and read the original story. It will probably give a better understanding of the whole scenario
I think for economic reasons Ms. Davis was forced to accept roles in films that were beneath her stature as an artist; same for Joan Crawford. Ironic (and sad) that they both met the same film fate. They were both such superstars (before the term was even used).
I think they were trying to do something like the O'Henry story, where the soldier is hung and he thinks he escaped but he didn't. It started out great but it ended terrible. Thanks for posting. The subtitles were like the computer-generated ones that I have seen before. I'm really not complaining as I watched it all the way through. :-)
It's based on a Daphne De Maurea short story which I've listened to an audio version of. There are slight differences. She thought she almost got hit by delivery truck. And 20 years had passed.
Okay, I'm not sure about the above description. There was no institution in this show. SPOILER!! If anything, she came back as a ghost twenty years later and everything was different. And her daughter turned out horribly (at least her mother would consider it so). This was really weird.
Okay, I've had a couple of hours to soften my reaction. I don't really think she would consider her daughter to have turned out horribly. She was a very loving mother and would have loved her daughter regardless of her surroundings. I am not a person who at 54 years of age has really watched any Bette Davis films at all, so I don't really know how she normally portrays a character. From the start, she seemed a bit whacky, stilted and surrealistic. She was constantly flitting about looking at everything around her, checking for dust and rearranging things to some ideal of perfection. Based on the above description, I was trying to figure out if she was already insane, or is this just how Bette Davis portrays a character... the manner with which she carried herself, her very precise diction, etc. Anyway, something bad happens to her character in the middle, but she seems to survive it, though you can tell things are suddenly different, and she reacts in an unusual way to things that seem outlandish. She just sort of goes with the flow, even though she walks home and suddenly it's all different, including the contents and the people in it! It's almost like a dream state. The ending was a bit sudden and disconcerting, almost like there were a few seconds missing or something. It seemed like a bad edit at a crucial spot, so I wonder if something happened there. It basically just resolves the whole thing in an instant and you realize what you've been seeing all along, but based on the description, I was sitting around waiting for her to be gaslighted into insanity and be carted off somewhere. It wasn't like that at all. :-) This definitely falls into the "Twilight Zone" category of things as you will read in other people's reviews of this item in other places on the internet.
Exactly esp. when the daughter states of the school owner that "she did her best for me. . . . after my mother was killed in a street accident." when clearly Bette, the mother is standing right there; WHAT HAPPENED!!!!
...my my. What a terrifyingly horrible experience....imagine! Everyone here certainly has a heart for this fanominal actress who gave us all so much, and the subtitles I'm sure were a mistake and even though some complain, please keep up the good work. Some people may have forgotten what the definition of "rude" is, forgive them.
This was actually pretty cool: If I followed this correctly (and yeah - the "subtitles" were abysmal) - she was either killed in the street accident, or displaced forward 20 years or so. The second "street accident" involving the same stack of wood was....a puzzling decision, to say the least.
The bulk of the episode, was a "flash-forward" (similar to someone's life flashing before their eyes) just as they are about to die. The first and second shot of the vehicle accident, were of one and the same incident. It was actually VERY deeply thought through by the looks of things - better still than many modern Hollywood productions (though of course, not with the same production values). Her visions, could only summon certain extents of enquiry. She couldn't think for example, to check death records, as such a thing, would be too unpleasant.
There are basically three comments below; 1) they loved it 2) they hated it 3) subtitles! This was really creepy! It gave me anxiety. 😐 they really screwed up the ending. I'm mad at the director. 😠
If you need/want someone to translate this into proper English (or Spanish), I would do it for free (do you know what that would normally cost???). I am 65, fully bilingual, and have been a huge Bette Davis fan since childhood. I would never make this offer to snyone, but I am so happy that you uploaded this to those of us who have never seen it. Google around enough, and it is not hard to find me. I just don't want to put my info straight on here. 🤗🇲🇽
I adore Bette Davis! She was the most honest actress the motion picture industry has ever known! Too bad Jack Warner took her for granted! She gave Warner Brothers the best years of her life and they treated her like dirt in the end! I hope Jack Warner is still burning in the hell where he belongs!
Yes, because you'll note at the very beginning of the film she references the decline of the neighborhood and the fact that one day all surrounding houses will become boarding houses, as did hers (in this fraction of a second).
@@saundramichael7968 I think she was playing a ghost, or a spirit. How they will linger when they die unexpectedly and haunt the living. Their time is merely a 'fraction of a second' compared to mortal timekeeping. That's the best I could come up with. I was hoping for the concussion story,, but good old Bette wouldn't let us down that easily. There had to be a plot twist at the end. A real grabber.
Suspicion S1.E28 Fraction of a Second Episode aired Apr 21, 1958 1h After spending the weekend with her daughter, Mrs. Ellis takes her child to the bus depot. When she returns home, she finds her furniture rearranged and three strangers insisting that they own the house. 👍🏽💯🤗
I think that the whole thing was very strange; as if many scenes were shot, to be organized later but then weren't...and then the whole point was forgotten....and then they ended it.
The old British Battle Axe with the cigarette in her mouth (a trademark) played in another Bette Davis vehicle, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" BTW, Bette exhibits herein quite a bit of the character of Baby Jane Hudson.
You must read the original story. Notwithstanding Bette's performance, the screenwriters did a hack job of conveying the story. The original is much more developed and satisfying.
OMG, at first while reading the subtitles I thought this was a movie about schizophrenia. Then I turned up the volume. "we don't lose sir how what he leaveMonday mornings when you"re getting because hotter with the every time love..." gotta go milk the car and fold the chickens,.... firday ... help....
The subtitles are like a script for the Two Ronnies. "I'll finish this" translated as .. "History heart the pivotal movement". I think drugs are involved ... 😂😂😂
It use to be such a pleasure to look out this window, it's the neighborhood it's not what it use to be, the neighborhood is a bit run down now, there will be roominghouses next. The rest of the people in the neighborhood are sloppy, they don't care what their house looks like. This is the last house around to be maintained with pride and care and dignity.
Yes, she died. She had a "flash-forward" about 20 years, which is why everything had changed. Of course, nobody had reason to be aware of her - presumably she didn't think to bother to see it as "a future event", which is why no old records were sought - only up to date ones. Nobody had reason to recognise her, as it was already established that she had died. In her own subconscious, Bette Davis' character knew she was about to die, which is why her daughter didn't recognize her either. Perhaps it was the fright that was driving her to do what she was doing throughout the whole film?
I heard this as a play on the radio, she is knocked fdown , she awakes and it several years later she found her daughter did not recognise her thisbplaynisvdim8lar
I'm pretty sure that was a side-effect of the post-processing that RU-vid does after a video is uploaded. The weird liquid-like movement in the background is (I think) an error related to image stabilization (the algorithm attempts to keep a person - in this case Bette Davis - centered in the shot, and compensate for relative motion between the camera and the subject. I'm guessing that the original shot had more dynamic camera-panning or something of that sort - which the algorithm misunderstood as "shaky camera". As to the subtitles - holy damn, those were *abysmal*. Good story, and great acting by Bette.
Sitting down on my day off my first time, seeing this, I didn’t expect her to die at the end I expected her to be on conscience and waking up in the hospital, and it was all a dream. The joke is purely on me, me and my gray movies.
I wonder why Betty Davis didn't start by asking what year was it. That would have helped slot. Was this a true story? I enjoyed it very much. Thank u !!!!
Bette Davis the greatest actress. Always loved her. But, I don’t understand the ending. At first , I thought the pile of wood fell on her daughters car and she died and Bette went crazy not believing her daughter died and she escaped from the nut house. But, the daughter appears. She doesn’t recognize her mother? Who bought the house? Bette comes in to present time. Visits the daughter. Doesn’t recognize her? She lives and the same ending? I don’t understand it. What happened? How did she appear 20 years later? What am I missing?
I've never seen this. Bette Davis always a great actress. I was waiting for the Hitchcock music at the end. So the meaning of this in the fraction of a second she floated out of her body into all that. Did she die or was she just knocked out. Or did she come back into her body laying there on the street in the fraction of a second. Hmm.. 🧐 🤔
03.01 Betty Davis' character apparently never owned an 'authentic Ostrich Feather Duster.' It's like a dust magnet, holds dust doesn't fling it about the room. :)
