Framed

Glenn Ford plays a stranger who drifts into town one day. However, he soon finds himself in a tiny bit of trouble and a beautiful lady (Janis Carter) comes to his rescue. However, this is NOT a kind lady but a femme fatale with an evil plan. Her and her married lover (Barry Sullivan) plan on murdering him in order to cover up some embezzlement. However, two huge monkey wrenches are tossed in--Carter's character is evil more evil than you might expect and Ford's is not nearly as stupid as she hoped. While the plot is decent (not great), the film is ultra-stylish, smoking hot and full of femme fatale badness--exactly what I like in a film! Not quite as hot and exciting as Ford's later film, "Gilda" but still quite good. It makes you wonder why Carter never really took off as an actress--she was exquisitely nasty and hot.

Janis Carter boasted a largely undistinguished filmography from the 1940s but she deserved (as so many of her female peers from this era did) better parts and greater exposure. As the scheming and duplicitous Paula Craig, she personifies the cool blonde bombshell (while her line readings are a wee bit stilted, her body language is instinctive and sensational). She's the spider into whose web drifts Glenn Ford, an out-of-work mining engineer with a bit of an alcohol problem who's looking for a break. Meanwhile, Carter's on the lookout for her embezzling boyfriend's lookalike, to furnish a warm body to provide a charred corpse. This is James M. Cain territory, and, though we've been through it with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred McMurray and with Lana Turner and John Garfield, this effort by Carter and Ford deserves more prominence; its writing, direction and cinematography are all well above average. One unique moment: a banner head in the local newspaper lets us know that one of the characters has been charged with murder, but just below it, in the mock-up, is the smaller headline "Meteorite lands near baby." I think they made that movie, too, about 10 years later.

Framed (AKA: Paula) is directed by Richard Wallace and adapted to screenplay by Ben Maddow from a story written by Jack Patrick. It stars Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan and Edgar Buchanan. Music is by Marlin Skiles and cinematography by Burnett Guffey.

Mike Lambert (Ford), down on his luck and fed up of getting nowhere in life, meets sultry waitress Paula Craig (Carter) and things will either get better or worse?

There's a road sign in this that grabs the attention, it reads DANGEROUS CURVES! Now that initially is in reference to a perilous road - with roads featuring prominently as dangerous parts of the play - but it quite easily could be, and in all probability is, a sneaky reference to Janis Carter's femme fatale. Paula Craig in Carter's hands dominates the film, not that Ford or Sullivan are pointless fodder, but it is both the actress and her character's show.

After a burst of pacey excitement opens the pic, action moves on to a cafe, from where we are introduced to Guffey's talents, from this point on almost everything is atmospherically shot. Slats and shads, lamps and cell bars, all get the Guffey lens treatment that's sitting superbly with the unfolding psychological dynamics. Very early on we are delivered two characters who basically are a cheater and a viper, while the main man of our story is a guy who struggling with his identity in life. He also likes a drink, but with that comes memory loss, which is never a good thing when you are holed up in a noirville town.

Stripping it back for examination you find the story is very simple, which is surprising and a little disappointing given the screenplay writer also did The Asphalt Jungle. Yet the characters and the actors performances, helped by some classy tech work, more than compensates - that is until the finale, which for some (me for sure) is a bad choice for character tone. But it's not a film killer, for we get everything from orgasmic glee shown in the process of a callous crime being committed, to characters either in need of a soul or facing their days of judgement. 7/10

I can't think of a movie in which he lost out, anyway.

Here he is a drifter who falls in with a treacherous woman. Initially, he offered work by her romantic interest, the king of film noir, Barry Sullivan. Someone once asked what movie star I felt I identified with most and it was Sullivan. The guy never gave a bad performance.

His girl here is played by Janis Carter. Her biography says that she was a hit in musicals on Broadway. I can see that. She has a boyishly cute look. (Ann Savage is hard to imagine in a musical. But look at Constance Towers, so fine in two Samuel Fuller movies and a Broadway darling.) Carter plays one evil woman! Wow, I would keep my distance from her! She's a waitress at a place called La Paloma when Ford meets her by she has high ambitions.

Edgar Buchanan is exceptionally touching as the miner who's willing to give engineer Ford a job. We can see he's kind of a loser but he is a very decent guy.

This is a tough little film. I recommend it highly.

This little film, made by Columbia Studios, is very enjoyable!! All about a woman who is greedy and wants to get hold of a quarter of a million dollars and plans to rob a bank with the bank president himself, but then something goes awry and well........ you will just have to watch this great B-movie to find out the rest, but I assure you that it is a film that is very good!! Nice work by Glenn Ford and Janis Carter. This film is a bit like "Double Indemnity", only with a twist ending, and a lower budget. Oh, to have this released on DVD--I would be so happy. I just love these old black and white film noir type films from the 1940's and 1950's.