The Wolf (1941 film)

La loba (originally in English The Little Foxes) is a film directed by William Wyler in the year 1941 and starring Bette Davis.

It is based on the play of the same name by Lillian Hellman, who also wrote the screenplay. Half of the cast (Dan Duryea, Patricia Collinge, Richard Carlson, Charles Dingle) were the actors who had played the role in the original Broadway version, released in 1939.

The original title The Little Foxes refers to the Bible, which in the Song of Songs says:

Hunt us the foxes, the little foxes that devastate the vines, for our vineyards are in bloom.

Plot

The action of the play takes place at the end of the 19th century in a small town in the southern United States. Regina (Bette Davis), the wife of local banker Horace Giddens (Herbert Marshall), along with her two brothers, Ben (Charles Dingle) and Oscar (Carl Benton Reid), unscrupulous individuals, decide to put their dream into practice. of their entire life: build a large cotton factory run by cheap labor and with which they will become even richer. Ben and Oscar conspire with her sister, Regina, to get her husband to invest in the business, since he is the true owner of her fortune. Regina sends her daughter, Alexandra (Teresa Wright), to find Horace, who is in Baltimore recovering from a heart attack.

Horace declines the offer on the grounds of his failing health and Regina insists and encourages him, but Horace sticks to his guns. In reality, Horace is concerned about the state of her daughter and tries to remove her from the environment of that family. Given this and desperate, Ben and Oscar persuade Leo (Dan Duryea), Horace's nephew, to rob his uncle, since he works in his bank and knows the contents of Horace's personal safe deposit box. he. Suspecting the robbery, Regina attempts to blackmail her brothers into giving her her share of her business. But Horace goes ahead and thwarts the plan. When he returns home, Horace tells him that he has changed her will and that she will take nothing but debts. Horace has a heart attack and Regina denies him the medicine, thus causing his death. However, before dying he uses the last of his strength to ask her daughter to get away from her mother and marry David, a journalist whom Regina rejects. While Ben discusses with her sister the circumstances of Horace's death, Alexandra overhears them, and discovers the wickedness of her mother and finally finds the strength to leave that house and go with David. Regina, dejected by her, watches her walk away from her from the window.

Awards

Oscar Awards 1941