Keiner ging an ihr vorbei

Arlene Dahl was a beautiful woman. She doubtless still is. She had a cold look, which works for this movie. She plays a gold-digger with little heart. The character seems to be icy physically, too: She likes what men can get her but romance and sex do not appear to be among her interests.

Herbert Marshall, for decades a leading man, ends up in this too. He plays one of the men she uses.

There are similarities between this and "Baby Face" with Barbara Stanwyck. That movie packs a real wallop, though. This one is chic but tepid.

Fab 50s fashions are the best thing this film has to offer with its story of a woman who works at some shirtwaist dress company who manipulates her way out of the "hoodlum" infested neighborhood in NY she comes from, claiming to be from tonier Boston! Sadly it seems they ran out of a costume budget halfway through, when, in spite of having hooked her biggest fish yet, she starts wearing outfits over again (such as a hideous white stole) - outfits less stylish, strangely, now that she lives in Paris!

The locations/sets are to die for. As is Arlene Dahl - gorgeous - but I kind of find her even more remarkable later in her life on the game show circuit. That's some long lasting glamour she's got! Besides as a young gal she looked too much like Janet Leigh. She married some hotties in her time and offsprang some too. Wow. Lex Barker, Lorenzo Lamas. Mmmm mmm! Not too shabby, tabby!

The film was introduced by a historian reading excerpts from a transcript of a suit brought by AD against the studio over a composite photo made for publicity purposes for which she maintained she never posed (and it certainly isn't in the film) in which someone kisses her nude shoulder. She insisted it was a "wanton" image, while maintaining she was "no prude". The court however found the image "delicate and artistic" or some such... she lost the case. All the same she says this is one of her favorite vehiculars. Well, I haven't seen any of her others but either they were pretty bad or her taste in hotties is better than her taste in pictures!

Anyway, the mitigating finale of the film is kind of a disappointment, as is the general low level of her wickedness throughout. Sure, she's "cheap and horrible" as Mildred Pierce said of Veda, but the whole story is told in more amusing pointed and flat out woman hatingly in some of those Hollywood precode films like "Babyface" with Babs Stanwyck (who never married any hotties). "Wicked" pulling its punches didn't really add much to it. Girl, if this is "wicked as they come" then I guess there are no whores, only (violated and somewhat narcissistic) madonnas!

This film almost gets to the finish line but for it's final minute. The end lacks a master touch but gets to that point with a creative plot. The Camera work is among the very best and drives the story almost flawlessly.

This priceless British copy of an American crime film comes to you courtesy of rising young director Ken Hughes with a tongue-in-cheek tone set from the outset by shots of fifties London accompanied by a noisy jazz score provided by Malcolm Arnold, with noirish photography by Basil Emmott.

Set in the days when travel by plane was considered the high of glamour, the presence of Sid James as Arlene Dahl's stepfather serves as a visual reminder of Miss Dahl's humble beginnings (early on she's seen wielding a broken bottle) before she rises in the world while wreaking havoc on all the men in the cast,

Arlene Dahl does a nice turn as a cold, manipulative woman, who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Along the way she goes a bit off the deep end of the morality scale, and inflicts some unnecessary punishment on some over-optimistic suitors. The director, who was also the writer, Harris, does a pretty good job of story-telling and framing most of the scenes. The emotional battles we see raging on the screen are ones that many viewers will have experieinced at one time or another. This character could have been formulated, however, without the last-minute copout rationalization given by the story line. Despite thiis one convenient mechanism, the film still holds up pretty well as a solid soap.