Ange ou démon

I saw this film in its original release in Hollywood and have never forgotten June Allyson's shrew of a wife and how she kept putting the psychological knife in her poor, emotionally wasted husband, played by Jose Ferrer. I was too young to know why a wife would do this but the effect has never left me. This film deserves a beautifully restored DVD presentation. June Allyson deserved an Oscar nomination and perhaps the award given the fact that she made a 180 turn against her long established type. Ms. Allyson would only make three more Hollywood films and then escape into television with her own series and then guest host and star in her husband, Dick Powell's, weekly anthology series. She proved her dramatic mettle over and over on television and lived out a serene, much respected retirement in California's wine country near Clint Eastwood's place. Those in Ojai, according to what one resident told me, would see Ms. Allyson in town and about and always gave her the respect of admired distance, yet with warmth. I loved June Allyson, still a handsome beauty to the end.

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.

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.

I saw the movie about 50 years ago. A friend of mine, who had seen the play on Broadway, told me that his mother and her bridge club had journeyed from New Jersey to NYC to see it in a matinée performance, and she told him, as I remember, "We girls found it one-sided." My friend was a full fledged alcoholic by the age of twenty. He found the movie too true to be good, if I may put it so.

I loved June Alyson ever since I had seen her in Singing in the Rain and the movie, the Shrike, has always stayed with me, in part because I found it puzzling the one time I saw it. I would really like to see it again; only the passage of time leads me to give it a "9" rather than a "10".

Many strong images from the film remain in my memory: the squalid 12 x 6 hotel room lit by a bare bulb hanging like fly paper from the ceiling in which the attempted suicide took place; the impassive face of the psychiatrist listening to the wife's (shrike's) analysis of her husband; her shock when the shrink asks her whether she has sought therapeutic help for herself; and some other moments, too.

It may be one of the great movies. It seems to have been lost to memory. How can I get to see it again?

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.