Now, Voyager (Blu-ray)

THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Nervous spinster Charlotte Vale (All About Eve’s Bette Davis) is stunted from growing up under the heel of her puritanical Boston Brahmin mother (My Fair Lady’s Gladys Cooper), and remains convinced of her own unworthiness until a kindly psychiatrist (Notorious’s Claude Rains) gives her the confidence to venture out into the world on a South American cruise.

Onboard, she finds her footing with the help of an unhappily married man (Casablanca’s Paul Henreid). Their thwarted love affair may help Charlotte break free of her mother’s grip— but will she find fulfilment as well as independence?

Made at the height of Davis’s reign as the queen of the women’s picture and bolstered by an Oscar- winning score by Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind), Now, Voyager is a melodrama for the ages, both a rapturous Hollywood romance and a poignant saga of self-discovery.