A common thread between Now, Voyager 1942 and Baghdad Cafe 1987 is the theme of personal transformation and self-discovery through unexpected relationships and environments. In Now, Voyager, Charlotte Vale undergoes a profound journey of liberation from her oppressive mother, gaining self-esteem and independence through love and her own inner strength. Similarly, in Baghdad Cafe, Jasmin’s arrival at the quirky desert Baghdad Cafe and Motel leads to her own transformation as she builds a surprising friendship with Brenda and its quirky inhabitants and finds a sense of belonging in an unfamiliar place. Both narratives highlight how stepping outside one’s comfort zone, be it on the ocean or in the desert, and forming connections can lead to empowerment and fulfillment.

Both Now, Voyager and Bagdad Cafe use clothing as a visual language for personal transformation: Charlotte Vale’s journey from drab, constricting dresses to elegant, self-assured ensembles mirrors her emergence from repression to confidence, just as Jasmin’s shift from tight, hausfrau attire to flowing, colorful garments signals her gradual liberation and blossoming in the desert. In both films, the evolution of each woman’s wardrobe becomes a powerful outward sign of inner change- a metamorphosis from invisibility and constraint to self-expression and possibility.

Where Now, Voyager begins like a deeply penetrating melodrama about maternal abuse and struggling identity, Baghdad Cafe unfolds like a hazy dream. Both women, Charlotte and Jasmin, take a journey toward awakening.

Now, Voyager 1942

“Don’t let’s ask for the moon! We have the stars!”

The iconic American melodrama that inspired the 1942 cult classic film starring Bette Davis. “Charlotte Vale is a timeless and very sophisticated Cinderella.”—Patricia Gaffney, New York Times bestselling author.

“I can think of no better account of the woman’s picture’s central role in American culture. At least we have the stars.” (Patricia White- Criterion essay We Have the Stars)

Here is a passage from David Greven’s Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman’s Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror (Palgrave, 2011) that specifically discusses Now, Voyager and Bette Davis’s performance:

“Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, and one suspects that what drew Davis to the role was the opportunities it gave her to perform a feat at which she excelled: onscreen transformation from one physical and emotional state into another. While several Davis films showcase her singular talent for such onscreen transformations, they are far from a unique event in the genre of the woman’s film, a prominent Hollywood genre for three decades, from the 1930s to the 1960s. Women frequently transform, either at key points in or over the course of cinematic narrative, sometimes on a physical level, sometimes in more abstract ways, as if in homage to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and her ‘infinite variety… In her classical Hollywood heyday, Bette Davis made an onscreen transformation her signature feat. In film after film, Davis transforms, usually on a physical level but often emotionally as well. Typically, this transformation is grueling on several levels, ranging from the woman’s social situation to her bodily nature to her psychic state. As I will be treating it as a central issue here, transformation in the woman’s film genre, as Bette Davis’s roles evince, is a traumatic experience.”

No matter how many times I watch Now, Voyager, I find myself weeping all over again-whether it’s Bette Davis’ profoundly moving performance or Max Steiner’s lush, aching score, the film doesn’t just tug at my heartstrings, it plays them like a symphony of bittersweet heartbreak; it’s more than a tearjerker-it’s a true weepjerker, and I surrender to its beauty every single time.

Now, Voyager, as in so much of her work, Davis’s theatricality becomes a conduit for something deeply authentic, reflecting an existential honesty. She lays bare the raw feelings at the heart of her characters, offering us glimpses of their essential truths. Acclaimed American playwright, actor, screenwriter, and drag performer Charles Busch describes Davis, and writer Ed Sikov sums it up:

“What I find interesting about her is that while she’s the most stylized of all those Hollywood actresses, the most mannered, she’s also to me the most psychologically acute. You see it in Now, Voyager in the scene on the boat when she starts to cry, and she’s playing it in a very romantic style. Henreid says, ‘My darling- you are crying,’ and she says, ‘these are only tears of gratitude – an old maid’s gratitude for the crumbs offered.’ It’s very movie-ish, but the way she turns her head inward, away from the camera, is very real.”

“In that instance, Busch so perceptively describes and appreciates Davis’s use of her melodramatic mannerisms and breathy, teary vocal delivery as well as her seemingly spontaneous nuzzling into Henreid’s chest to express the undeniable legitimacy of self-pity. It’s not a pretty emotion, but Davis somehow makes it so. Through Davis’s elevating, sublimating stylization, this woman’s secret shame becomes beautiful.”– Ed Sikov – Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis

Few films from Hollywood’s Golden Age have endured in the cultural imagination quite like Now, Voyager (1942), a sweeping romantic drama that transcends its era through its nuanced exploration and psychological portrait of transformation, female autonomy, and the complex bonds of love and family. Tracing the journey of Charlotte Vale, a woman suffocated by her domineering mother and her own internalized sense of worthlessness and self-loathing, as she emerges into independence, self-acceptance, and a bittersweet love.

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