Film: "The Letter" (1929)

Contemporary film reviews (1929):

(author unknown; from the clippings file at the Margaret Herrick Library): "Talking pictures are vindicated and justified as never before by Jeanne Eagels, in the 'The Letter,' by all odds the most dramatic picture the talkies have yet offered. To miss it is to ignore a milestone in the progress of the new art, for surely the history of audible films must ever give a glowing chapter to this no less than to Miss Eagels herself. Every good fan remembers her in John Gilbert's 'Man, Woman and Sin,' in which, though silent, she was strangely eloquent. Add to that eloquence the power of a unique voice trained to the sheerest gradation of expression and you have as skilled an actress as the stage in America can offer...Because of this, and because of her great gifts, Miss Eagels has the opportunity to educate the picturegoing public in subtleties of acting undreamed of by movie cuties and their heavy-handed directors."

Mordaunt Hall's review in the N.Y. Times (Mar. 8, 1929):

"An audible photoplay that defies the derision that has been flung at so many specimens of this type of entertainment was offered last night at the Criterion Theatre by Paramount-Famous-Lasky. It was the talking pictorial version of W. Somerset Maugham's play, 'The Letter,' which has been intelligently produced and most competently acted. It is the first offering of its kind in which there are true passages of life-like drama, a fact that is chiefly due to the ability of the players, who are all known to the stage.

In the last few scenes, Jeanne Eagels, who impersonates Mrs. Leslie Crosbie...senses the full power of her role. It is where Leslie Crosbie, after being acquitted of the murder of her lover, Geoffrey Hammond, in a tirade against her husband for having brought her out to the dismal life on a rubber plantation, near Singapore, tells him that she still loves the man she sent to his death. These stretches are not only stirringly performed by Miss Eagels, but the mechanical contrivances hold up through the difficult task of reproducing her passionate condemnation and virtual excuse for the murder."

N.Y. Evening World: "There are one or two spots in which Miss Eagels reaches enviable heights;there are moments when her work will stir you. At the end of the story she is positively great. This is the Jeanne Eagels of old."

N.Y. Telegram (Evening): "Miss Eagels as the wife gives a performance which holds the spectator from first to last with compelling intensity."

N.Y. Daily News: "A most worthy debut for Jeanne Eagels as a talkie actress. A most trying part-- tense, highly emotional throughout, leading up to a terrific climax in which Miss Eagels does a powerful-- we may even say, magnificent , piece of work."

N.Y. American: "'The Letter' at the Criterion, is the best all-talkie melodramatic movie yet produced...Jeanne Eagels, the star, is in a large measure responsible for the film's terrific appeal. Miss Eagels, in her liar-wanton-murderess role, gives one of the most gorgeous portrayals that has ever been caught on the silver sheet. Her apathetic moments are delicately drawn, her emotional ones simply superb. Yes, Jeanne reaches those intangible places indefinitely termed 'the heights' in this one."

Andrew Sarris' review after a rare screening of "The Letter" at MOMA:

"Where Eagels attains her epiphany of emotion is in the trial scene in which she gives testimony to her defense attorney played by O.P Heggie. Here De Limur [the director] holds down on the reaction shots so as to give Eagels sufficiently long takes to establish an intense lyricism in her elaborate lying; With Eagels we know all [about the murder she committed] before she opens her mouth on the witness stand, but she nonetheless succeeds in leaving our mouths open with a passionate duplicity that verges on sociological schizophrenia. Indeed, she leaves us suspended helplessly in that ironic limbo between the inferno of her private passions and the paradise of her public protestations. And irony of ironies, it is when she is reciting the litany of the nice girl fending off the male predator that she becomes most lascivious to all the patriarchal types on the bench and the jury box. It is the actress here first and foremost taking off on her own into those indeterminate realms were a very marginal art is enriched by a very powerful myth. This one sequence alone constitutes one of the greatest passages in the history of screen acting. The ending is almost equally stunning with Eagels releasing all the demons of her hypocrisies with her raucous defiance of her disapproving husband: 'I STILL LOVE THE MAN I KILLED!'"

Vincent Canby, after a screening of "The Letter" in 1977:

"Jeanne Eagels's English accent in the 1929 film version of W. Somerset Maugham's 'The Letter' was not perfect. It teetered around on lines that often sounded like ,"Deah, we've gowt to face the fects," yet her performance was remarkable... 'The Letter' (1929) was directed, unsteadily, by Jean De Limur and supervised by Monta Bell. Jeanne Eagels is absolutely stunning, with a face that recalls both the tough Jean Harlow and the ladylike Ann Todd, and a slightly husky voice that must have sent shivers up and down the spines in the third balcony. I have no idea if Bette Davis saw this before she starred in the remake, but there's also a suggestion of the Davis style in Miss Eagels."