Crime of Passion (1957)

Kathy (Barbara Stanwyck) leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.Barbara Stanwyck, Raymond Burr, Fay Wray, Robert Quarry and others... this is quite the cast. That alone should make this worth watching. Stanwyck leads the way, and while this may not be her finest performance, it is always nice to see her in the lead.How this is not considered one of the better-known film noir movies out there is something of a mystery to me given those involved. It certainly is not seen on the level as "Asphalt Jungle" or the works of Fritz Lang. Maybe it should be?

I gave this 9 starts for two reasons: (1)I am a big admirer of Ray Burr and love to watch anything he does, (2) I love when characters become morally depraved by force or by choice. Now, I don't listen to critics...never found them useful. If I see a preview for a movie or it has an actor I like in it, I'll see it. I enjoy watching films and I don't see how picking films apart, comparing them to others is necessary. If you want to see a film, see it. Don't waste your time analyzing it. Anyway, to the review. Barbara Stanwyck plays quite the character in Kathy Ferguson, who works for a newspaper. She's not a reporter but rather the "Dear Abby" type. Still, it is impressive to see a woman having a career(and in the media for that matter). instead of being relegated to the role of housewife...a rarity for the 50's. ***Quick note, a very young Joe Conley plays a food delivery boy at the newspaper. Joe, as you may know, played Ike Godsey on "The Waltons." I digress, anyway you can see that Kathy is conniving and will do anything to get herself to the top of the ladder. It turns out a woman writing for advice is wanted for murder and two cops arrive looking for Kathy's help in tracking down the woman. One of the cops, Bill Doyle(Sterling Haden), takes a shining to Kathy and her likewise. She even gives Doyle's partner a false lead so Bill can solve the case. See, right there you can tell Kathy is the type that will do whatever to get what she wants. It later becomes quite a shock when Kathy turns down a lucrative newspaper job to become Doyle's wife in the burbs. She likes it at first but, who is she kidding? He has card games while the wives sit in another room and talk about mundane "wife" issues. Kathy can't stand it nor can she stand her milquetoast husband. She begins to create a plan that will get her the happiness SHE wants and hopefully make her husband happy too. She causes a car accident with the wife of Doyle's boss...Inspector Tony Pope(Ray Burr). Soon the couples become friends and begin to socialize and Pope takes a liking to Kathy. He even shows her some files of people he thought committed crimes for "interesting" reasons. Of course, Kathy plays into this interest further by saying she'd like to see HIS files "from time to time." Basically she's feeding Pope's ego...sort of like cheating on her husband "emotionally" not physically. I don't think Kathy cares for Pope in "that way" but he is showing interest in her which is something she is thriving for and he certainly lusts after her. Kathy later tells her husband to leave the department and get a safer job in Beverly HIlls. He relents(barely) but after a few minutes agrees to resign. Kathy knows, I mean KNOWS, the resignation will not go through because she's been showing so much interest in Inspector Pope that he'll beg Bill to stay. Turns out, Pope tells Doyle to rethink the resignation as things will be changing in the department. Kathy has a nice grin on her face upon hearing this. However, things don't change as fast as Kathy wants and she later plants notes that her husband easily finds. The notes accuse her of having an affair with someone in the department. This enrages Doyle(finally showing some guts) as Kathy had hoped. She claims the wife of Doyle's superior, Capt. Charlie Alidos(Royal Dano), is spreading the rumors because the couple is jealous of Bill and Kathy's friendship with the Popes(especially Kathy and Tony's recent closeness). Bill heads to the station and beats up Alidos. Inspector Pope finds out, investigates both men and sends Alidos to another department while keeping Bill instead, not before asking if the notes mentioned anyone in particular(i.e. Pope). Doyle quickly becomes Capt. but it's not enough for Kathy. She learns Pope's wife is ill and he plans to retire. She wants Bill to be Inspector and Pope said it could be possible. Then he kisses Kathy passionately. She pulls away but then realizes(you can see it in her eyes) if she sleeps with Pope he'll make Bill an inspector. Well, men lie and so does Tony. He tells Kathy to leave him alone and that the one-night stand was a mistake on both parts. He warns her to leave him alone and, of course, she doesn't. Now she can't live with the fact that she put-out for another man and didn't get anything in return. She decides someone needs to die and soon she finds herself on the opposite side of the law. I love how Ray uses Kathy and how she resorts to becoming a sex pawn. Ray plays the kind of man you love to hate and it was just before he started his role as "Perry Mason."

Crime of Passion (1957)A gripping widescreen black and white crime film where the loner lost in a complacent world is a woman--played with steely determination by Barbara Stanwyck. In some ways this film is a familiar type, but it has some unique lines that open up as it goes until it becomes a unique tale of seduction and ambition.You won't see Sterling Hayden better (this is around the time of his defining but more constrained role in Kubrick's "The Killing"), and throw in Raymond Burr and, believe it or not, Fay Ray (of "King Kong" fame, 1933), and you have quite a cast. It moves fast though there is some redundancy to the events sometimes--we get the idea of her ambition, for example, but they give us several examples of it instead of one good one. In general the writing is very smart and sometimes witty, in the hands of a late noir standard bearer, the woman writer Jo Eisinger.The great dramatic photography is by legendary Joseph LaShelle, and it's all pulled together elegantly by director Gerd Oswald. Who's he? Good question...this is his most respected film (he also did the good "A Kiss Before Dying" which is streamable on Netflix). I think this is a lucky confluence of talents--Stanwyck of course, and Hayden, but also LaShelle and Burr and Eisinger. It might be no coincidence that one of the themes, in fact the trigger for Stanwyck's change of character halfway through, is a revelation of sexual (gender) stereotypes--men play cards and silly things that sound important, and women sit in the next room not playing cards saying silly things that sound silly. At least in Eisinger's eyes. It's great stuff for 1957, and has more honesty than many later approaches to the problem. Stanwyck's solution, of course, is dubious. She plays a role she played in one of my favorite movies of hers, twenty some years earlier, in "Baby Face," where she sleeps her way to success.A good one, late in the noir/crime era for this style, but so good it holds up well.

Barbara Stanwyck delivers an outstanding performance as a hysterical woman who pulls every string ethically and then eventually unethically in "Brass Legend" director Gerd Oswald's hidden gem of a crime noir "Crime of Passion" that qualifies as a sociological expose of the displaced women in the late 1950s that anticipated the feminist movement. Since this movie was under the aegis of the Production Code, the savvy viewer will know that crime doesn't pay and it doesn't pay in this sharp sage. The Stanwyck protagonist is the epitome of an independent woman who doesn't believe in marriage but she turns around and marries a veteran Los Angeles detective who lacks ambition. Compensating for his lack of ambition and her lack of a job, she pours her energy into getting her husband promotions, even if it means 'playing dirty' and relying on underhanded schemes, finally she embraces murder as a means to an end. Sterling Hayden is perfectly cast as the level-headed cop, while Raymond Burr makes his presence felt even when he is not on screen as Hayden's superior and Stanwyck's illicit lover. "Crime of Passion" qualifies as a film noir and the low-budget and concise direction by Oswald adds a luster to it. The last quarter hour is a clincher. Look for Stuart Whitman as a police lab technician. Atmospheric and edgy material, "Crime of Passion" depicts a headstrong woman's collapse in a contemporary society when she has no outlet for herself. The moral of this movie is that the Stanwyck character should never have quit her job as a manipulative newspaper advice columnist.