La ferme des hommes brûlés

Woman Obsessed teams Susan Hayward and Stephen Boyd in a rugged northwestern about a widow and the farmhand she hires. Though set in Canada according to the Citadel Film Series book, The Films Of Susan Hayward the outdoor scenes were shot in Lone Pine, a location that director Henry Hathaway favored. He had shot The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine in that area over 20 years earlier.

When we first meet Hayward, she's a happy rural woman with husband Arthur Franz and son Dennis Holmes. But then Franz is killed and Susan's really up against it raising a child and trying to work a small farm. She hires a brooding Stephen Boyd as a hand.

Although not mentioned as per The Code, Hayward's got other needs that are subtly suggested and Boyd does have a superficial resemblance to Franz. But it's superficial only. Boyd is inarticulate and almost surly at times, especially around young Dennis Holmes.

This was the strength of Woman Obsessed. The plot could have gone in several directions, Boyd's very inarticulateness could have hidden great sadness, great humanity, or an incredible villainy. You really don't know until the end how it will turn out. Though Hayward is top billed, the film really does turn on Boyd's performance.

Also in the film is Theodore Bikel as the area's doctor, a very compassionate and humanitarian man and Barbara Nichols who just comes across too much as a wisecracking city dame. You don't find people like her in the rugged Northwest.

Woman Obsessed holds up well today. Canada still has rugged frontier area and people probably do still live the way Hayward and Boyd do.

This neighbors to the North melodrama was released by 20th Century Fox after Hayward's Oscar win for "I Want To Live!" It isn't a terrible film, but it isn't terribly good either. Hayward's Mary Sharron is widowed early in the story when her husband is killed by a falling flaming tree during a forest fire. Hayward grieves. Tries to run the farm herself. Is forced to hire moody Fred Carter (Steven Boyd). Hayward watches him chop wood in a tight white tee shirt and eventually marries him. Her son Robbie (Dennis Holmes) - a dreamy kid who hangs out by a quicksand pit and enjoys watching stock footage fauna frolic in the woods, has some difficulties with Carter - especially when Carter kills a deer and forces Robbie to watch the gutting. Carter gets tougher and touchier and more and more moody - he's a ball of psychological sturm und drang roiling with anger centered on his mamby pamby brother.... Carter's Canadian accent grows thicker as the plot careens toward rain and resolution. Carter rapes Mary - she becomes pregnant - Carter moves out to the barn - and threatens to leave altogether. Rain arrives, signaling: (as it always does) change. Carter carries Mary miles in the torrential downpour to town so that she can deliver her baby safely. She eventually learns of this selfless endeavor and her heart softens again. But, Carter is redeemed only after Robbie pulls him from the foreshadowed quicksand sinkhole. Unfortunately Hayward doesn't get much of a chance to crackle but fun performances and a decent amount of melodrama make this a fair one to catch.

After seeing Woman Obsessed, I realize that the Hollywood film industry lost such a talent when the great Susan Hayward died in March, 1975.

She epitomizes troubled women in one film after another. She was so good at it and Woman Obsessed is no exception.

As a remarried woman, still haunted by the tragic death of her first husband, Hayward shows mighty grit in this film with an on par terrific performance by Stephen Boyd, so great that year as Massala in Ben-Hur.

Boyd, as the second husband, appears bully-like in the treatment of Hayward's young son, who turns in quite a performance himself.

What made this flick so good was the wonderful compelling ending where reconciliation and good judgment come together.

***1/2 for a very good film.

Susan Hayward, Stephen Boyd, and Theodore Bikel star in "Woman Obsessed," a 1959 film set in Canada.

Mary Shannon (Hayward) is a grieving widow with a young son (Dennis Holmes) who hires a man named Carter (Boyd) to help her with her farm. They eventually marry, in part to stop the town gossip. Carter turns out to be more troubled than he let on, and becomes angry with the boy, whom he considers a coward, and then violent toward Mary. When a crisis occurs, Mary learns what's behind Carter's outburst toward her son and the resulting violence toward her.

The acting in this film helps the movie, which is slowed down and cut up by too many establishing shots of beautiful scenery. Hayward does a good job as a strong woman who attempts to put her grief aside and move on, but finds it difficult. And Boyd is excellent as a man in great pain who faces rejection from the people he loves; the more he's rejected, the more angry he becomes.

Slow moving. It's a shame we lost Boyd so early on - he was a strong actor and very handsome.

Producer Sydney Boehm also adapted John Mantley's book for the screen, an emotionally-tangled tale of a widow and her young son in Saskatchewan who advertise for help running their farm; a rugged yet oddly child-like logger (and an acquaintance of the widow's late husband) takes the job, while gossiping tongues wag back in town. Seems the logger has a chequered past and a mercurial temper, which should send warning signs to our heroine (Susan Hayward)--who ends up doing what all simp-heroines in soap operas do, she marries him! The opening prologue of about 12 minutes could have been dispatched with just two or three lines of dialogue, while the mix of on-location photography, studio shots and intermittent nature footage causes the film's visual sense to look mighty inconsistent. The exteriors are very pretty, yet the human drama at the forefront is blobby and unformed (particularly with Stephen Boyd's character). Hayward is less domineering than usual (and she seems to fall down a lot around horses!), but playing Mommy doesn't appear to be her forté. **1/2 from ****