A Vergonha de Ser Profana

An important film that deserves attention for two reasons: 1. An unusual story, of an evil woman who actually shows respect for religion; 2 For an unusual low-key, yet convincing performance from Rod Steiger and an interesting one by the beautiful Diana Dors. Actor Tom Tryon is given third billing for a brief role, while the more important role of the priest and brother of the Rod Steiger character acted by Arthur Franz is given lower billing. The direction is just average fare. But the tale written by an unknown writer named William Durkee is interesting.

This movie is interesting -- which puts it light years ahead of most films.

It has some real problems, but the acting is believable. Advertised liked a B-movie, but with all the melodrama of a major Hollywood barnburner, Dors, Steiger, and Bondi play their roles with perfection. This one is worth viewing.

Despite the BBC/PBS series Danger UXB, bombshells do not lie thick on the English soil. So, in the post-war years – the era of Jayne Mansfield and Mamie van Doren, of Brigitte Bardot and Anita Ekberg – Britain hastened to close the bombshell gap. Its most potent weapon was Diana Dors (née Diana Fluck). Sort of a bangers-and-mash Marilyn Monroe, with the same fulsome figure and cascade of molten-platinum hair, she was an inflatable doll who would soon blow up to Rubenesque proportions. She would become something of a joke, even to herself, as her self-mocking appearance in the Joan Crawford fright vehicle Berserk attests.

But when we first see her, in a prison cell, in John Farrow's The Unholy Wife, her face is innocent of makeup and her mousy brown hair is raked back. Had she chosen to present herself less brassily, she might have been seen not so much as a sexpot but as an actress, and a surprisingly adept one at that. She plays the grass-widow wife of a long-gone pilot and lurks in bars cadging drinks from potential sugar-daddies (her workmate is Marie Windsor, in a stingy tease of a role). She meets and marries lonesome Rod Steiger, who runs a family vineyard in the California wine country (shades of The Most Happy Fella).

But she's restless and sullen, left in the huge gingerbread mansion with her aging mother-in-law (Beulah Bondi) and her pre-existing young son while Steiger stays obsessed with his casks and bottles. On the side, she romances a hired hand (Tom Tryon). Her dissatisfactions turn murderous, and she hatches a scheme to shoot her husband on the pretext that she mistook him for a prowler. Alas, she kills his best friend instead, but comes up with a ploy by which Steiger will be convicted of the murder....

The Unholy Wife is slow and moody rather than tense and agile; Lucien Ballard's color photography shows the dark, muted interiors that would later distinguish the Godfather movies. And typically, we lose track of Steiger's character under all the mannerisms he piles on top of it. But Dors, who starts out high-strung and abrasive, mellows down into a conflicted and even touching trophy wife maneuvered into homicide less out of greed or lust than by stifling boredom; she offers more dimensions than the black-hearted Jezebel demanded by the plot and throws it out of kilter. And at the end, the postman does indeed ring twice, which comes off less as a twist than a cheat. The Unholy Wife finds itself stranded midway between being a brooding marital drama and a suspense story, now meriting attention chiefly because of the underappreciated Dors.

For some reason this film has a "B-movie" quality about it and I think it has something to do with the lead actress, Diana Dors. Although some have referred to her as, "the English Marilyn Monroe", she just doesn't seem to have the "on-screen presence" that Marilyn had. At least, I don't think so. Because of this, while she is certainly very pretty, I never quite got that intrigued with her performance in this picture. Her acting seemed kind of bland and "wooden". Be that as it may, in this film she plays "Phyllis Hochen" who is the conniving wife of a rich wine-maker ("Paul Hochen") played by Rod Steiger. But she doesn't love him. Instead she is having an affair with a local rodeo cowboy named "San Sanders" (Tom Tryon). Being terribly unhappy with Paul she schemes to get rid of him. Anyway, so much for the plot which is pretty basic and has been used any number of times. While I don't want to sound terribly negative, I will say that one thing I didn't care for was the technique used which had her telling her story from a jail cell in the past tense. Now, I realize that this is a typical film-noir technique but (when used) it often seems to take some of the mystery out of it. Anyway, add in an average script, weak directing (John Farrow) and mediocre acting all around and it pretty much rates a "5 out of 10". While it wasn't "great" I suppose it was an "okay" way to spend an hour and a half.

I am quite surprised what little attention this film garnered both when it was first released in 1957, and again by the film historians of today. In my humble opinion this film is a classic film noir that includes a very good script, great acting and a seasoned director in John Farrow who prior to this film, had a resume most other directors would envy.

Diana Dors plays Phyllis Hochen who was a sex pot in the 1950's and her hour glass figure was on full display as the cheating wife of Paul Hochen played by the great actor Rod Steiger whose resume is as long as my arms. Phyllis had planned to kill her older aged and rich husband Paul , but as the old saying goes "the best laid plans" and so it goes. Phyllis shoots the wrong guy by mistake but quickly pulls together an alternative scheme to fool her husband into taking the fall for the killing of his own best friend which she says was an accident.

As another old saying goes "love is blind" so the gullible husband Paul agrees to Phyllis's scheme in which he tells the sheriff that he shot his own best friend but little does Paul know that Phyllis's alternate plan has been set up to find her husband Paul guilty of first degree murder so he would at minimum go to prison for life, or even worse be hanged at the gallows.

Phyllis is cheating on Paul with a rugged good looking and younger bronco busting rodeo man named San Sanders played by Tom Tryon and her plan is to take Paul for all his money and squander it with her lover San. Living with Paul and his cheating wife are Paul's mother and Phyllis's young son. Paul also has a brother who is a devoted priest who symbolizes truth and celibacy, but the sexy Phyllis even has Paul's brother the priest fooled.

This is a very good film noir and I am convinced that all that was missing for this film to have gone onto great fame and accolades and maybe even a few Oscars, would be to have a top five director such as Alfred Hitchcock to have directed the film and without changing even one snippet of the films presentation, or the actors, the film would have received instant recognition and Oscar nominations. I really believe that.

It is well worth watching at least twice. I give it a solid 7 out of 10 IMDB rating.