Precipícios d'Alma

Joan Crawford is an heiress and a famous playwright. During rehearsals, she insists that Jack Palance be fired: It's not that he isn't a good actor. He just doesn't have the matinée idol looks, she maintains. Before we know it, the play has been successfully launched and she is on a train back to San Francisco. Who should kind of turn up on this train but Palance? He and Crawford play poker and she falls in love with him. OK, it seems: He wasn't right for a Broadway Don Juan. But for an unmarried lady of a certain age like her, he has just what it takes.

The fact that Crawford and Palance (the actors) have no chemistry isn't a problem. In a way, it works in the movie's favor. We know he hasn't forgotten the humiliation she put him through. We know she thought him not so hot to begin with.

Gloria Graham is used well as his girlfriend. They're kind of rough with each other too. He speaks of breaking all her bones, rather casually and almost endearingly.

Once Crawford and Palance have married, the suspense heats up. It's a highly suspenseful film -- well written and well directed. Palance is nimble in his role and Crawford is at her very best too. My problem with it is that I've seen it a few times and the print has never been good, which is a problem in the dark scenes toward the end.

But compare this with other movies Crawford was making at around the same time. "Torch Song" is one of the most outrageously ludicrous star vehicles of all time. "Queen Bee" is pretty funny, too -- unintentionally, of course. "Female on the Beach" ... In all the others, men come from miles to fall at Joan's feet. (Speaking of feet, "Sudden Fear" seems, for whatever reason to have more than a usual number of close-ups of its stars stockinged feet and her shoes.) No one has ever seen anyone so beautiful as Crawford in these movies. Maybe this made sense at the time but it doesn't now. She was near 50. Inthose days, this was like being near 65 for a woman.

In "Sudden Fear," she is an old maid. No one comments on her appearance one way or another. She is rich and successful but it doesn't seem that we're meant to view her as a great beauty. What we have instead is a beautiful movie -- quite possibly her best.

I've lately been listening to a series of blogs on Joan Crawford's career and so was directed to this film noir for which she was Oscar nominated. It turns out to be a terrific thriller with la grand dame Joan in her element as the rich middle-aged heiress who in her spare time knocks out hit plays on Broadway. While casting her new play she rejects for the lead part a young actor (Jack Palance in an early role) much to his disappointment but when they later share a train journey back to San Francisco, romantic sparks surprisingly seem to fly between them and before long Crawford's Myra Hudson apparently has the one thing missing from her comfortable but incomplete life, a loving husband. Or so she thinks. At one of the couple's house parties, an attractive young woman (Gloria Grahame) appears who we soon learn is actually Palance's girl-friend and before long they've cooked up a plan to get rid of the millionairess Joan, leaving all her lovely money to Palance as her grieving widower for them to spend.

Only problem is that Crawford plans to change her will as soon as her lawyer comes back to town after the weekend, donating the bulk of it to charity and so greatly reducing Palance's expected bounty. So Palance and Grahame hurriedly devise a plan to murder Crawford over the weekend but accidentally and inconveniently for them as it turns out, record their plan on Joan's dictaphone recording machine for her to later hear, much to her horror. When she accidentally breaks the recorded disc of the evidence, it seems to her the only way to save herself is to devise a cunning plan of her own to eliminate her would-be murderers. Like the playwright she is, Myra's own plan is carefully crafted but naturally things don't exactly go to plan leading to a tense, exciting dead of night climax on the dark deserted streets of San Francisco.

This is one of those noirs with a too-fantastic plot which could fall apart at any moment but builds up such a head of steam down to taut atmospheric direction, a strong Elmer Bernstein soundtrack and top acting by the three leads (Palance was Oscar-nominated too), that you're swept along with each unlikely turn of events until the fraught conclusion which returns Joan to a darkened apartment with a gun just like it did Mildred Pierce years before only this time she's looking out for herself and not her selfish daughter. She's great in this, her expressive face often shown in close-up reminding us she started in silent movies. Palance is surprisingly good as the fawning, oily-slick husband and Graham as ever is good value as the pushy, tarty mistress egging Palance on.

Making good use of San Francisco's exteriors, Joan's extensive wardrobe and in a key-scene, a mechanical toy-dog, this is a great fast-paced noir led by a star performer in one of her last but best leading roles.

Sudden Fear (1952)

Such a dark and dramatic, noir-styled surprise for me. Joan Crawford as the rich daughter and talented playwright is terrific, avoiding the camp of later years and really playing a complex, emotional role perfectly. I didn't even notice that Gloria Grahame was in it, and when she shows up I knew there was going to be a thrill--she balances Crawford, and gives the third main actor, Jack Palance, a way to bounce back and forth. And Palance, as a seeming actor/lover, is two-sided and then some, and really gives the part depth. He's so believably likably it's chilling.

Add to this some of the darkest, and most shadowy, night photography you've seen, and a hard hitting orchestral score, and fast editing up and down the streets of San Francisco, and you've got a gem. It's an amazing, over-the-top movie, but it makes sense, and the last shot of Joan Crawford at night (I'll say no more) is astonishing for its emotional shifts. Yes, there is Mildred Pierce and countless other great Crawford films, but for her performance alone you have to see this one. Director David Miller I've never heard of and may never hear of again judging by his film history, but he pulls off a stylish, intense masterpiece. It's filled with common types and common twists, but a lot of them, and well done, well done.

Joan Crawford is a playwright who marries Jack Palance and then realizes he is planning to kill her. The formula works this time, thanks largely to the impressive acting of both Crawford and her leading man, Jack Palance. Gloria Grahame is the "other woman" (as usual) and plays an important part in the plot twist that provides a surprise ending.

Nail biting suspense, this is a film noirish kind of thriller that goes into full gear once Crawford learns her marriage is a mistake. Both Joan and Bette Davis (real-life rivals) were nominated for Best Actress Oscars when this was released (Davis for 'The Star') but they both lost to Shirley Booth (for 'Come Back, Little Sheba').

A good, crisp, no-nonsense thriller that showed us how good Jack Palance was in sinister roles.

Well, close enough. At least the title rhymes.

Joan Crawford is playwright Myra Hudson. She has great independent wealth, but she likes the satisfaction of creating her written works and the appreciation and accolades that it brings her. Lester Blaine (Jack Palance) is auditioning for the lead in one of her plays when Myra uses her veto power because she just doesn't see him as the romantic type. Lester doesn't take this too well, and tells her off.

Later, on her way back to San Francisco, she sees Lester on the train home and ironically he woos her in a whirlwind courtship. Now there is something that happens before they get married that lets you know that Lester is manipulating her, but you can't be sure if it is because he truly loves her and wants her to feel like she is losing him or he just wants to marry a rich woman. It's door number two.

So the two have a romantic honeymoon, and Myra thinks everything is fine. For that matter, so does the audience. But a girl (Gloria Grahame as Irene) that Lester knew before he met Myra shows up at a party of Myra's as a date of one of her lawyers, Junior Kearney. It can't be a good sign when the perennial bad girl of the noirs shows up accidentally on purpose with Mannix as her date. If you are under sixty you likely have no idea who Mannix is, but I digress.

So it turns out Lester was a con man pre-Myra, but it looks like he is OK with just being the kept husband of a rich wife until Irene shows up looking for a piece of the action. The two resume their affair and soon they are planning to kill Myra.

How does Myra find this out? There is a clever plot device introduced earlier in the film that leaves no doubt as to what is going on in Myra's mind. But she is the only person who is witness to it. The two plan to kill her sometime during the next three days - that is when she is signing a new will. She is naturally revolted and terrified at what Lester is up to, but she is also a playwright, and so she conceives a cunning plan to murder the murderers first. So why didn't she just use her great wealth to, I dunno, take the train to Seattle and then contact her lawyer and divorce the guy? I guess because there would be no film?

Actually Myra's plan has a couple of huge plot holes in it which I won't divulge. But among the more long running of the plot holes is that if New York is the city that never sleeps, then in 1952, San Francisco is the city that is fast asleep at 10PM and also everybody is stone deaf after sundown. Mayberry didn't roll up their sidewalks as tight as Frisco in this film. If you want to see what I mean, watch and find out. The film is neatly divided into two parts. The part before Myra finds out what is going on and is chuck full of dialogue - the first 45 minutes. And then the last 45 minutes where Myra has discovered what is going on and is trying to keep from being killed. The second half is practically a silent film, but the tension never lets up.

There is really some good acting going on in this film, especially by leads Crawford and Palance. Very subtle in that you can tell what they are thinking by just their facial expressions and body language in many cases. Joan Crawford was unlucky to be tied to MGM for 17 years and only be free when MGM fired her in 1942. The studio really did put her in some dreck especially in the late 30s and then blamed her when things didn't pan out. Her1940s and 1950s work was in much better quality films and this is one of them. I highly recommend it.