Frauengeheimnis

This marvelous 1950 film deals with 3 women who gave up their baby boy for adoption. 5 years later, the child is involved in a plane crash that killed his parents. Each of the women believe that the boy is theirs.

Patricia Neal, as one of the women, is a hard-nosed reporter. As with the others, the film goes back to show the situation that would lead them to give up the baby. Neal had divorced her husband only to learn that she was a reporter. A career woman, she could never care for a child or hold on to her marriage.

Then there is Ruth Roman who went to prison for killing her boyfriend. The latter wanted her to have an abortion when she told him of her pregnancy.

Eleanor Parker is a sweet woman who gave up an illegitimate child and is now happily married. You're rooting for Parker to be the mother. She can provide the boy with the proper upbringing. True, it will mean that she will have to tell her husband about her past, but she can provide the right nurturing environment.

Of course, the 3 women will come to the mountain area where the boy is in the plane. Neal will have to use her paper connections to get to who the real mother is.

As a reader, please connect to this film via your video store. It's well worth the trip.

Naturally, each of the women

Everything is perfect about this film, the story, the actors, the direction, Wise at an early stage extremely efficient, and even the music, never dominating but always reflecting the right mood. This is a literary film telling the stories of three women who all had to give up their only child because of circumstances, usually related to the war: the child was born September 15th 1944, so they all got pregnant at the highlight of the war, one by a soldier who had to obey orders, and the other two by men who left them - one of them we'll never even see. At the same time, it's a great story of journalism, Patricia Neal making the almost too perfect journalist which costs her her marriage, and the insights into her handling her profession in the quest for saving the child from the top of a mountain are almost documentary in their authentic character, while at the same time it develops into somethinbg of a thriller - there is even a murder here. Enough said, only superlatives, and they can only be repeated and continuously insisted on.

Smartly combining a bit of the disaster movie with melodrama, Robert Wise was very good at directing actresses; his precedent movie, "the set-up" ,although taking place in the boxing world , featured a prominent female character (the boxer's wife was not only decorative and she had this sublime sentence :" WE've won tonight" .)

By and large ,the first part is given over to Parker, then Neal dominates the second one -and her evolution from an arrogant journalist to a compassionate woman is convincing - ;Roman appears late in the story (apart from a brief glimpse in "the shelter" ) but her character is the only one who does not belong to a privileged milieu :an ex-convict ,she 's lost everything and she clings to this hope : a child who could be hers ,should he be found still alive. The audience sides with her when she slaps in the tabloid press journalist's face.

The rapport the three actresses have is deeply moving , and although we eventually learn the true identity of the mother ,it does not seem to matter anymore ; it's OUR child .

A young boy is the sole survivor of a plane that went down in the mountains and a rescue mission of mountain-climbers are on their way to get him. The news flash reveals that today is his birthday and that he had been adopted through a certain agency. When Eleanor Parker hears this, she loses it, as she had given her baby up five years ago and that today would have been his birthday. She never told husband Leif Ericson. She hightails to the site where the press is stationed near the mountains. There she meets Patricia Neal and Ruth Roman, who both had used the same agency to give up their babies on the same day. Through the device of flashbacks, we are allowed the story of each and how each came to this point of their lives. This is excellent little film with great actresses for the lead roles, fleshing out the characters and making them three-dimensional. I grant you actresses like Bette Davis, Susan Hayward, and Joan Crawford has guts, but no one could quite deliver a line like Patricia Neal with her sarcastic coyness. And, Ruth Roman is one tough cookie, too. But the story is what really takes center stage with a taut pace and the outdoors being used to good advantage by the film's director. But who's baby is it? We are told, but there is more to it than any happy ending. The film reflects the struggles, loves, and yes secrets of three women, who were existing in a world and trying to come out a survivor, and that's what makes this film successful: the story of people. People are the story.

Three women review their past lives while they wait for news that will change the future totally for one of them.

But it isn't "Letter to Three Wives"!

Putting aside the shameless use of the formula from Mankiewicz' masterwork, "Three Secrets" is an enjoyable, well-written drama. Another similarity to "... Three Wives", and one that I have no objection to, is leads Patricia Neal, Eleanor Parker & Ruth Roman being mature, extremely attractive women; not a teenybopper or nymphet in sight.

A second movie that came to mind while watching "Three Secrets" was "The Big Carnival" with its media circus of cynical reporters covering and exploiting a disaster. However Wilder's film followed this one.

The beautiful Cole Porter tune `I get a kick out of you' is well used on the soundtrack.