Secrets de femmes

Spin offs, copy cats clones, Three Secrets is easily compared to its earlier & far better film A Letter To 3 Wives Basically both plots involve 3 women in a quandry.or a dilemma..in 3 Wives .one of their husbands has run away with another woman (Miss Addie Ross).. who which ? stream of conciousness flashbacks..witty & brilliantly directed by Joseph L.Mankiewiecz a superb cast & even better supporting cast "Letter "is one of the all time great films.."Tree Secrets 3 women face another dilemma, a boy is involved in a plane crash in the mountains. Boy was adopted by parents who were killed in crash..Boy survives crash 3 women gave birth to a boy same day..& gave up for adoption to the same shelter..Whos child is this? Does anyone care.?Yes it is agood film very a sorbing & very well acted. 3very good actresses Eleanor Parker Patricia Neal & Ruth Roman are the 3 women in despair,,and give very fine performances.Direction is very good also by future Oscar winner Robert Wise.. but a lot is borrowed from "Letter" the basic 3 women plot, the miasma, and the stream of concsiousness flashbacks.They worked well for "Letter" & work well here also... but the conclusion is smaltzy & the film lacks the wit and intelligence of its predecessor.. Worth seeing.. a "Chick" flick & some good actors involved..but Letter to 3 Wives is an original & a masterpiece !!

Three women review their past lives while they wait for news that will change the future totally for one of them.

But it isn't "Letter to Three Wives"!

Putting aside the shameless use of the formula from Mankiewicz' masterwork, "Three Secrets" is an enjoyable, well-written drama. Another similarity to "... Three Wives", and one that I have no objection to, is leads Patricia Neal, Eleanor Parker & Ruth Roman being mature, extremely attractive women; not a teenybopper or nymphet in sight.

A second movie that came to mind while watching "Three Secrets" was "The Big Carnival" with its media circus of cynical reporters covering and exploiting a disaster. However Wilder's film followed this one.

The beautiful Cole Porter tune `I get a kick out of you' is well used on the soundtrack.

Whatever suspense THREE SECRETS has is derived from the audience not knowing (until the end) which woman's boy has survived a plane crash. Each woman (ELEANOR PARKER, RUTH ROMAN and PATRICIA NEAL) thinks it's her own abandoned five year-old son. As they wait patiently for more news on the identity of the boy, each woman reflects in flashbacks on what led up to their heart-breaking decision.

Robert Wise has directed all of the melodrama with some fine touches and a steady hand, so that Parker, Roman and Neal are all seen to advantage in a plot vaguely similar to that of A LETTER TO THREE WIVES in which three women await news on which husband deserted them.

Parker is a woman who had an illegitimate child; Roman had to give up her child while she served a jail term; Neal was a career woman who preferred career to domestic chores.

Sensibily acted and directed, it's a rather low-key melodrama that might not meet the demands of fans not enthusiastic about so-called chick flicks.

Everything is perfect about this film, the story, the actors, the direction, Wise at an early stage extremely efficient, and even the music, never dominating but always reflecting the right mood. This is a literary film telling the stories of three women who all had to give up their only child because of circumstances, usually related to the war: the child was born September 15th 1944, so they all got pregnant at the highlight of the war, one by a soldier who had to obey orders, and the other two by men who left them - one of them we'll never even see. At the same time, it's a great story of journalism, Patricia Neal making the almost too perfect journalist which costs her her marriage, and the insights into her handling her profession in the quest for saving the child from the top of a mountain are almost documentary in their authentic character, while at the same time it develops into somethinbg of a thriller - there is even a murder here. Enough said, only superlatives, and they can only be repeated and continuously insisted on.

Smartly combining a bit of the disaster movie with melodrama, Robert Wise was very good at directing actresses; his precedent movie, "the set-up" ,although taking place in the boxing world , featured a prominent female character (the boxer's wife was not only decorative and she had this sublime sentence :" WE've won tonight" .)

By and large ,the first part is given over to Parker, then Neal dominates the second one -and her evolution from an arrogant journalist to a compassionate woman is convincing - ;Roman appears late in the story (apart from a brief glimpse in "the shelter" ) but her character is the only one who does not belong to a privileged milieu :an ex-convict ,she 's lost everything and she clings to this hope : a child who could be hers ,should he be found still alive. The audience sides with her when she slaps in the tabloid press journalist's face.

The rapport the three actresses have is deeply moving , and although we eventually learn the true identity of the mother ,it does not seem to matter anymore ; it's OUR child .