Ange ou démon

June Allyson steps way out of type for this bravura acting effort. It is a psychological study of a playwright (Jose Ferrer) slowly sinking into depression and attempting suicide unsuccessfully. Allyson plays his loving but demanding wife. It is very clinical and grimly realistic. Allyson is magnificent and 100% believable as the domineering wife who comes close to loving her man to death. Ferrer is very good as the brooding playwright who comes apart at the seams under the pressure he buys into. Edward Platt is very good as Ferrer's brother. Only Joy Page is a tad unbelievable as Ferrer's ultra-sympathetic would-be paramour. Altogether, I rate it 9/10.

Before the ending to "The Shrike", I loved the film. José Ferrer, as usual, turned in a great performance and the story was very unusual and kept my interest. It's so sad, then, that the original and more downbeat ending was replaced with a ridiculous upbeat ending.

The story begins with a Broadway director, Jim Downs (Ferrer), is brought into the psychiatric emergency room. He'd just attempted suicide and they plan on keeping him for some time. Why he did it isn't exactly clear at the beginning of the film but over time you learn that his manipulative wife has a part in this. The problem now is that he cannot get out of the place without her help...and she doesn't exactly seem eager to let him out unless it's on her terms.

According to IMDB, June Allyson wanted to play a grittier role, but the studio execs got nervous when preview audiences couldn't accept the actress in a role where she isn't sweet. So, although the story is supposed to be about a harpy of a woman, inexplicably, the film walks back on this at the end...and ending that just doesn't ring true and undoes so much good in the movie.

The Shrike was quite an eye opener for me seeing it for the very first time. It further confirmed my own opinion of the almost limitless talents of Jose Ferrer.

The roles associated with Ferrer, what he's best known for are such bravura performances as Cyrano DeBergerac and Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge. His role in The Shrike is subdued and Ferrer conveys a great performance by use of his body language and facial expressions. Ferrer plays a theatrical director who makes a suicide attempt and is now in a psych ward and trying to get out.

Ferrer directed and starred on Broadway for 161 performances in the 1952 season. He did the same for the screen and wrote the background music for the film.

A lot of the cast came over from Broadway. One addition was June Allyson who was Hollywood's all American wife and sweetheart. She wanted to play a bad girl and I think she was cast in the part because to the outside world the wife is June Allyson, not the demanding woman Ferrer is married to. The public did not want to see June Allyson as she is here.

The scenes that are the best are in the sanitarium. Straight out of The Snake Pit, this film borrowed a lot from that classic.

Definitely a must for Jose Ferrer aficionados.

A decent film ruined by a totally unbelievable ending. The final 2 minute scene went against everything I'd been viewing for the previous 90 minutes. I allow a wide berth in films, especially older ones, for unrealistic situations, characters, coincidences.....but I'm not sure if I've even seen anything like this. Judge for yourself.

June Allyson is really good in this movie but Isabel Bonner should be given some credit also. Especially when she was married to the writer and died playing her part. I wonder how much time went by between filming the movie and her death.

(July 2, 1955) ACTRESS DROPS DEAD ON CARTHAY CIRCLE STAGE The final curtain fell on the Carthay Circle Theater stage last night for Isabel Bonner, New York stage and television actress, who collapsed and died as she played a hospital bed scene with Actor Dane Clarck in "The Shrike." Miss Bonner, 47, who in private life is the wife of Joseph Kramm, author of "The Shrike," was seated by the bedside of Clark when she suddenly fell forward with her head down on the spread.