Ange ou démon

Before the ending to "The Shrike", I loved the film. José Ferrer, as usual, turned in a great performance and the story was very unusual and kept my interest. It's so sad, then, that the original and more downbeat ending was replaced with a ridiculous upbeat ending.

The story begins with a Broadway director, Jim Downs (Ferrer), is brought into the psychiatric emergency room. He'd just attempted suicide and they plan on keeping him for some time. Why he did it isn't exactly clear at the beginning of the film but over time you learn that his manipulative wife has a part in this. The problem now is that he cannot get out of the place without her help...and she doesn't exactly seem eager to let him out unless it's on her terms.

According to IMDB, June Allyson wanted to play a grittier role, but the studio execs got nervous when preview audiences couldn't accept the actress in a role where she isn't sweet. So, although the story is supposed to be about a harpy of a woman, inexplicably, the film walks back on this at the end...and ending that just doesn't ring true and undoes so much good in the movie.

June Allyson is really good in this movie but Isabel Bonner should be given some credit also. Especially when she was married to the writer and died playing her part. I wonder how much time went by between filming the movie and her death.

(July 2, 1955) ACTRESS DROPS DEAD ON CARTHAY CIRCLE STAGE The final curtain fell on the Carthay Circle Theater stage last night for Isabel Bonner, New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with Actor Dane Clarck in "The Shrike." Miss Bonner, 47, who in private life is the wife of Joseph Kramm, author of "The Shrike," was seated by the bedside of Clark when she suddenly fell forward with her head down on the spread.

On Broadway, the Kramm play did have a more downbeat ending in that it is clear that there is no way for the two to ever live together again. BUT the ending, in the film, is essentially the same. No matter how much the wife, so brilliantly essayed by June Allyson, professes a change in her makeup, and no matter how they look walking hand-in-hand down the street, there is NO DOUBT that only further problems await this couple. There is definitely a cloud of doom over the whole thing, and even their steps are hesitant providing a clue to the future. Jose Ferrer chose Allyson for this film, and he was so right despite her feelings over the years that he may not have been. There should have been awards for her in The Shrike. (She had won honors for comedic turns in other films, including Too Young To Kiss, which pales in comparison to her work here). Her recent death only makes it sadder that her skills as an actress were never totallya realized by Hollywood. Her comedic and musical skills are evident in many films, but her serious work (The Secret Heart, for example) deserve to be studied again.

A decent film ruined by a totally unbelievable ending. The final 2 minute scene went against everything I'd been viewing for the previous 90 minutes. I allow a wide berth in films, especially older ones, for unrealistic situations, characters, coincidences.....but I'm not sure if I've even seen anything like this. Judge for yourself.

First film directed by highly talented actor Jose ferrer ,who would direct his own version of the Dreyfus affair,long before Roman Polanski .

His portrayal of a failed playwright is thoroughly convincing : confined to a mental hospital after nearly taking his own live, he remembers his past ,his wife who dominated him , who treated him like a grown up kid , urging him to give up on his writer's job for a place in her father's business.Ill at ease with the other inmates , he sometimes wonders if it's not a wrongful confinement .June Allyson,cast against type, is not bad as a selfish wife who finally realizes she may need a shrink too .An over possessive woman ,she fears her husband may leave her for an actress ,Charlotte: in fact she does not see this thespian is a way for the writer to assert himself as a man.It's perhaps too bad that the ending should have been sweetened ;but do not miss Ferrer's excellent performance.