Keiner ging an ihr vorbei

Following the success of All About Eve, there were many knock-offs to give other actresses their day in the sun. "I could have been Eve Harrington!" they all cry. If you want to see Arlene Dahl being "as wicked as they come," then check out the aptly titled drama.

Beautiful, and with a sensational figure, Arlene finds out early on that when men are attracted to her, they lose their good judgment. They'll do anything for her, and she learns to take advantage. Starting with her stepfather and his friends when she's young, Arlene gets a warped view of love and romantic relationships. They're nothing but a way for a woman to get ahead, she believes. And she wants to go straight to the top. Along the way, she steps on and over Herbert Marshall, Philip Carey, and a string of other foolish men.

The witty screenplay has lines that will make you chuckle even though the situation is tense. "How much do you love my husband?" Faith Brook asks Arlene, while extracting her checkbook from her purse. Poor Philip Carey falls in love with Arlene and thinks she could be different if she learns to love in return. When she repeatedly disappoints him, he quips, "You could try the want-ads. Wanted: rich husband, preferably someone else's." If you're an Arlene Dahl fan, don't miss this dramatic thriller. It's spicy and fun.

Kiddy warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, since there's a rape scene, I wouldn't let my kids watch this movie.

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.

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.

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 is an amazing film for its very dense direction bringing the best out of a rather cheap story and some totally unknown B-actors, Herbert Marshall being the only film star among them and playing the shabbiest role. Arlene Dahl in the lead reminds very much of Kim Novak in films like "Vertigo" , the same kind of superior beauty with something wrong about her, while Michael Goodliffe, somewhat reminding of Trevor Howard, stands for the passion that turns on the drama. Philip Carey as the male lead succeeds in makíng a very complicated part and character quite convincing and likeable, the one who saves some human dignity in a pit of human pitfalls.

It's as a psychological drama that the film is highly interesting, modern and timeless. Almost everyone sees that there is something wrong about Kathy in her cruel disdain of men while at the same time everyone must fall for her, but no one can understand what the trouble is, least of all herself, or if she does, she keeps a splendid poker face and never loses her control, although, as it proves, she is constantly walking on a razor's edge by an abyss. There are also parallels to Polanski's "Repulsion", it's a related case, but here you get the full story, although not until the end. You are left hanging in the end with everything lost but hope, which is no more than a faint light that no one can know if it will survive.

Ken Hughes later made other excellent films, especially "The Trials of Oscar Wilde", and this is no less impressing in its extremely smooth psychological direction where nothing is out of the context, like a perfect jig-saw puzzle with no pieces missing and all fitting perfectly.