Shadow of a Woman

This is the kind of movie I saw on late-night TV as a kid that made me a devoted film noir fan. Its atmosphere is astonishingly eerie. It reminds me, in this regard, very much of the (better) "My Name Is Julia Ross."

The child, emaciated from a diet of nothing but orange juice. The charming but truly sinister new husband. The spooky home to which the bride comes.

It's that little boy that clinches it is a must!

A Film-Noir that is the type that uses psychological persuasion and medical methods to subtly terrorize and control victims with sheer will and a charming personality. There are no guns or physical attacks, it is all done with romance and power. It is one of the few, if any, films that dealt with naturalistic or holistic medicine and focus on diet and exercise to cure, that is used as a sure sign of villainy because of the dated belief of inherent quackery.

This has a creepy feel and an unnerving atmosphere of a small budget that can work to its advantage and an unknown cast that also adds to character maladies and a sense of losing one's footing.

A really effective story of forced proximity and family tie downs. A little sleeper that is only let down by a take no chance happy ending that is used in so many otherwise edgy films of the era, even in the Noir genre, that end it all with a period and more times than not would be more progressive with three dots...

Okay slice of psychodrama and woman-in-danger flick. Still the script remains a rather uneasy mix of several elements. There're shadowy elements of noir, just emerging in '46, but mostly it's whether wife Brooke (King) can undo husband Eric's (Dantine) evil schemes and still survive. Can't say the plot's too original since Brooke marries Eric on short notice, not realizing his dark past. He poses as a doctor with unconventional methods, but just how "unconventional" is he. King looks good in 40's outfits, still I wish she (or director Santley) could have worked up more emotion. That would have heightened tension as the story winds down. But then the showdown is not what is ordinarily expected in this type movie. There's a good twist concerning the characters that I didn't see coming. So there are some surprises. Too bad that culminating fist-fight is none too plausible given Carl's (Alvin) gimpy leg. But dig that all- night diner that Joe (Erdman) presides over. It can compete with any of noir's many iconic diners.

All in all, the flick's an okay time-passer, but doesn't really pack the tension that's waiting there in the concept.

...or maybe I should say it was a low priority rather than low budget noir, at least for Warner Brothers. WWII has just ended and Warner's A list stars have not yet returned from war, so the B list actors got a chance from 1942-1947 to take the lead.

This starts out as many a noir starts out - a lovely but lonely gal marries in haste to a dashing stranger - a doctor at that!. But beginning on their honeymoon it seems like someone is trying to kill her new husband and not being the least bit subtle about it. Also, there are strange people following the new couple around and taking pictures. Oh, and hubby forgot to mention he's been married before, has a son, and is in a nasty custody fight with his ex-wife.

The art design is cleverly done. The surroundings start out bright and cheery - on the beach at a seaside resort. As the new bride encounters layer after layer of suspense and uncertainty, the environment becomes as gloomy as her potential future as she ends up living in her husband's creaky old home with two sour looking servants that don't seem to like her any more than she trusts them.

I say that this seems like a low priority film to WB because there are some plot holes and goofs that just look silly in retrospect. The police consider the deceased an accidental death because he has fallen from a balcony although he carries clear marks and bruises from a beating? The police chief has the picture of the President on his wall, but it happens to be the President that died the year before (FDR)?? The new bride writes letters to a trusted friend about people she doesn't trust and then gives those letters to those untrusted people to mail?? The new husband has a distinct European accent but his sister does not??

The script is great overall, the atmosphere perfect, and the acting adequate, in particular I have to give kudos to Helmut Dantine as the creepy acting new husband. I'm sure in 1946, with memories of the war in Europe still fresh in everyone's minds, the rather Germanic accent of Helmut Dantine added just the right amount of suspicion and mystery to his character. Plus, note the subtle undercurrents of the coming cold war and red scares in the rising element of suspicion against anyone who is "different" - in this case Helmut Dantine's character who dares to question conventional medicine and even uses hypnotism on his patients - oh the horror! He MUST be a Communist! (Tongue in cheek here folks, this film is not about politics!)

The beautiful and financially independent Brooke Gifford comes to regret her hasty marriage to quack "Doctor" Eric Ryder. Too late, she discovers their marriage is just a ruse to get custody of his son back and steal his inheritance. Why did she marry him in the first place? He's a divorced guy with a bizarre health food fixation (he's written a book called "Are You Eating Yourself Into the Grave?"). But it's the usual story. She was lonely; there weren't many marriageable men around during just-ended WWII. Slickly manipulative Eric, in the typical style of abusive men, swept her off her feet. Brooke's now older-and-wiser narration tells the story in the form of flashbacks.

This fascinating postwar film (over) dramatizes the way women were sucked back into domesticity after years of emotional and financial self-sufficiency during the war--and the pitfalls it held for them. Thank god Brooke still has some money and a house in San Bernardino--it gives her the means to fight back. It also enables her to have a terrific wardrobe--just because her husband's a potential murderer doesn't mean she can't look great. And you can be sure that cheapskate Eric wouldn't pop for all those trips to the hairdresser and manicurist, either.

Eric's health-food fixation is interesting, too. We think of healthy food as virtuous these days, but this film shows that in postwar America, too much of a concern with nutrition was considered quackery, if not worse (and in this case, it is worse). Eric, talks with a bogus European accent--"Have face in me, my dahling!" he tells Brooke. There's also a lot about women being "tired" in this film. Eric is always telling women they're "tired" so he can get them out of the way. How tired can these women actually be? They probably worked twelve hour shifts during the war and now they're supposed to be fragile?

The title, "Shadow of a Woman" is significant. The way women were driven from the public sphere into lives of forced domesticity after the war indeed led them to become shadows of their former selves.