Alma de Pecadora

Cleo Moore plays a remarkably strong-willed young woman who is an orphan kept as a work-slave in a waterfront café by the man who stole all her father's money. She is too glamorous for her own good, and no one stops ogling her for a minute, despite the fact that she has no time for that kind of thing. One night she accidentally sees the horrid old man receiving a large sum of cash in his office from a crook, to whom he has passed some stolen goods. She waits until he is asleep and creeps in and steals the money and takes it outside and buries it in a secret place where no one could possibly find it. She then confesses to the police the next morning that she is the thief, and is sent to prison, where she learns gardening and is told by the old gardener of the power which plant roots have to shift things underground and break through walls (this is important later in the story). She is let out after three years for her excellent behaviour and then makes her way back to the café, but it has been demolished and the old man has absconded to South America, so she cannot take revenge. She gets a job in another café owned by a compulsive gambler, to wait things out until she can be certain the various local crooks aren't following her when she goes to dig up the loot. He loses all his money and she wants to help him out with her stolen money. She also falls for a handsome young fisherman. Things get complicated and then more complicated. She sends someone out to dig up the dough but it isn't where she buried it. Then he suddenly comes into money and she thinks he has tricked her, so she goes to see him to protest and he ends up slightly dead, or is he? The film is very good viewing, and Cleo Moore is something all right.

ONE GIRL'S CONFESSION was one of the more popular "B" movies of the 1950's and made a modest name for it's voluptuous blonde star, Cleo Moore, as the Marilyn Monroe of the second feature. Cleo as cast as the poorly treated ward of a crook who runs a dump of a restaurant on a dock. Tired of his nastiness, Cleo decides to steal the small fortune the man has racked up in his latest illegal activity. She then buries the loot, turns herself in and serves out her jail term, knowing the money is safely stashed. But is it? And what will our blonde bombshell of a convict do with the loot once she's free? This is quite an entertaining little potboiler in which Cleo utters the semi-famous movie quote "Men are all alike, their faces are just different so you can tell them apart."

This film could have easily been a tawdry exploitation film. Instead, it is a solid B move acted out by very good B actors. The writer is the real star of the film, as the story has several twists and turns, and the viewer will be fooled at least once. Cleo Moore, a very strong B actress who specialized in making several entertaining B films, has the lead in this one. She plays a struggling waitress working for a man who stole her father's business.

The miser gets what's coming to him (without violence), and Cleo takes his life savings. The film moves on from there with several nuances. Supporting Moore in her role is the king of B movies, Hugo Haas, who probably made more B films than any other actor I know of; at least in major roles. He plays a gambling owner of another hangout that Cleo eventually comes to work for. There is also a fisherman as a romantic interest. Well worth viewing.

Ill-gotten gains seldom prosper.

Sandwiched between " "strange fascination" and " bait" , "one girl's confession " ,although featuring the Moore/Haas couple is much more melodrama than film noir ; its numerous sudden new developments , its emphatic moral side ( the heroine wants to be punished for what she's done -though she has extenuating circumstances ,her father having been ruined by her boss- ,her good behavior in prison , her donation to charity , her desire to stay on the straight and narrow in spite of it all );sometimes her attitude takes naiveté to new limits : even if she may be afraid of being followed by a detective , telling where her dough is hidden to a man whose reputation is shady (an unrepentant gambler) is not very smart ,even though it provides the screenplay with another sudden new development.

The best idea is the scene with the gardener :pay attention to a moment which may be insignificant ,but has a pivotal importance for what comes next.

Written, produced, directed, and starring... one person.... is sometimes a sign of a so-so work. In this case, it's a Hugo Haas project, with Cleo Moore as Mary, the blonde bombshell. I thought she looked a lot like Jayne Mansfield or Marilyn Monroe, and reading Cleo's history, she had indeed lost a part in "All About Eve" to Marilyn M. and also like Marilyn, Moore died quite young, at 50, from a heart attack.

In our story, we learn that she has been raised by Mr. Stark, and has been working for him, but doesn't like the way he treats her. She also witnesses a shady deal with some character, and is sure that Stark cheated her father in business. She takes the money box, and is immediately caught by the police. Mary is off to prison, and must figure out how to start over. She gets released, but is constantly worried that someone will try to take "her" money... the money that she snitched. Mary finds work in another pub, and seems to fit right in. There are some funny bits here where we see the shop-owner's girl try to palm his poker winnings, but the shop-owner (Haas) is on to her, and keeps taking it back. Well, we're about halfway through the film now, and it's all been story set-up so far. Mary tries to lend Damitrof, the owner, her money, but things go all wrong, and it FINALLY starts being a film noir. Lots of close-ups on our blonde starlet, and things are happening now! I tried to guess the rest of the story, and I was partially right, but there were some surprises along the way. Pretty good story. Certainly entertaining. Part of a "Bad Girls Columbia Films Noir Collection" from Sony.

Also keep an eye out for the prison gardener played by Burt Mustin-- he was in TONS of early films, and I remember him as Frank Purdue, in the commercials for Purdue chicken!