Daily Archives: February 4, 2015

My Reputation
Directed by Curtis Bernhardt
Written by Catherine Terney from a novel by Clare Jaynes
1946/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Jessica Drummond: You know, it’s amazing how I can learn to like martinis. It’s an acquired taste like anchovies.[/box]

Taking over a role that might otherwise gone to Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck is absolutely terrific in a glossy Warner Brothers “woman’s picture” that manages to stay clear of melodrama.

The year is 1942 and the city is Chicago.  As the story begins Jessica Drummond (Stanwyck) has just lost her husband after two years of illness.  She has two adolescent boys.  Her mother (Lucille Watson) is the model of turn-of-the century manners and is aghast that Jessica refuses to wear black.  A friend of the family is helping Jessica manage the estate.  After a decent interval has passed, the mother urges Jessica to marry him.  In the meantime, Jessica, while keeping up a brave front, is going nearly crazy with loneliness.  This gets worse when the boys return to boarding school.  Best friend Ginna (Eve Arden) urges Jessica to join her and her husband at their cabin at Lake Tahoe instead of going South with her mother as planned.  Jessica takes Ginna up on the offer.

At Lake Tahoe, Jessica meets cute with Maj. Scott Landis (George Brent) when she breaks a ski.  They spend most of the remaining days together but Jessica energetically rejects Scott’s advances and they part abruptly.  Jessica can’t get him out of her mind when she returns home, however, and when Ginna spots him at a Chicago restaurant Jessica rushes there to “accidentally” run into him.

Before long, Jessica is in love and ready to throw caution to the wind.  She even persists with the relationship after Scott makes clear that he is not the marrying kind.  But does Jessica have the strength to carry on with the affair over the objections of her mother and children and the ugly gossip in her social set?

The plot is quite reminiscent of All That Heaven Allows but Stanwyck’s character has more backbone from the get go than Jane Wyman’s ever mustered.  She is absolutely radiant here and the part lets her explore a broad range of emotions.  The staid George Brent does not really convince as a free spirit but does not detract from the film either.  Both Eve Arden and Lucille Watson are their usual enjoyable selves.  The film was sumptuously shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe and looks beautiful.  The film has been described as a melodrama but I really didn’t see that.  At no point does Stanwyck play the victim of anybody.  Recommended.

The film was made in 1943 but was not released to the general public until 1946.

Trailer

Night Editor
Directed by Henry Levin
Written by Harold Jacob Smith from a story by Scott Littleton and a radio program by Hal Burdick
1946/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Jill Merrill: I don’t need you, I can buy and sell you. I don’t know why I bother seeing you.

Tony Cochrane: You don’t know why? I’ll tell you. You’re rotten through and through. Like something they serve at the Ritz,only its been laying out in the sun too long.[/box]

This was a fun pulpy film noir but what was it with the ending?

A reporter stumbles into his office, late, drunk and unable to go home.  The editor and some other reporters are playing poker.  The editor takes up the cautionary tale of homicide detective Tony Cochrane.

It seems that Cochrane (William Gargan) was a crack detective and devoted family man, especially close to his little son.  That all changed when he fell prey to socialite Jill Merrill (Janis Carter) and began an adulterous affair, from which he seems powerless to extricate himself.  While Cochrane and Jill are smooching on an isolated lover’s lane, they witness a man beating a girl to death in a car with a tire iron.  Cochrane is prevented by Jill, who fears publicity, and his own cowardice re his wife from going to the victim’s aid or investigating.  Jill opines that the girl probably deserved what she got anyway.  Naturally, Cochrane is assigned to the homicide investigation.

Unfortunately, Cochrane’s car left a tire print at the scene of the crime which he feels compelled to destroy, further implicating him in the crime.  But he doggedly pursues his leads even when they take him deep into Jill’s social circle.  There is really only one possible outcome.  I will leave it to viewers to see how the film gets there.

OK, so we know that under the Hayes Code adultery cannot pay.  I was not prepared for the sheer audaciousness of the ending though!  Another given of the period is that in any adulterous relationship the woman must be evil personified and the man her hapless dupe. Janis Carter may not be the world’s greatest actress but she does make a really wicked femme fatale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1aZCcSc8Sw

Clip