Good acting can hide many things in a movie, in "Mr. Skeffington," it conceals a slow script and inept directing to produce an exceptionally moving drama with great emotional impact and effective probing of human nature.

Bette Davis returns from a screen absence of several months to deliver a remarkable performance as Fanny Trellis, the toast of New York. Fanny has the gay blades of the city at her foot, but her erratic brother, Trimpey, becomes involved in a $25,000 swindle and Fanny has to marry the swindled, Joseph Skeffington, bachelor president of the New York Stock Exchange, to save face for the family.

"Mr. Skeffington" could well be titled "Mrs. Skeffington." The powerful theme that overshadows occasionally dull moments and makes the movie outstanding revolves around Fanny her intense pro-occupation with personal beauty, blotting out her true nature even to herself. The desperate struggle to carry beauty into old age is touching cinema, get in an early twentieth-century atmosphere with a compelling, heavy, suspenseful tone. The mood is tense, the effect like a fizzling fuse of dynamite.

Fanny loves herself, and when Joe starts taking his secretaries out, she snatches the opportunity and sues for divorce. Joe sails for Germany. When Hitler comes into power, Joe, a Jew, is subjected to unbelievable cruelty in a concentration camp. He returns to America, blinded, his stock-market wealth gone with the depression. Fanny has lost her beauty,--realizes she really loved Joe all along, and the two are reunited in their old age.

Claude Rains is masterful in the title role. He plays Mr. Skeffington with an almost frightening cold reserve. And with Miss Davis at her best, the result is superb characterization that rescues a poorly-executed story and makes first-rate moviegoing.