Allotment Wives (1945)
You might moan when you hear the official voice-over talking about the War Department's benefits program and such. But hang in there. The intro is brief, and it's kind interesting, and it sets up the main movie, which has a great hook: women marrying several absentee G.I. men at once so they can collect multiple benefits. Including big death benefits if the men never returned..
This isn't a brilliant affair, but it's better than you'd expect. It has some mediocre acting and routine filming, but it also some some really good parts. The key is the story, and the way the investigator (one main man, a curious, underplayed part by an underused, quirky actor, Paul Kelly) does his job.
The leading female is played by Kay Francis. Never heard of her? She was Warner Bros. number one actress for several years in the early 1930s. Yes, and yet has really no single film to point to that has held up as great (she did do an interesting George Cukor movie early in both of their careers). But she's terrific with this middling material, and feels like an undiscovered leading lady. There's a scene between her and her saucy daughter that ends in a slap that will remind you of a similar scene in "Mildred Pierce" a year later. But Francis is usually just likable, even as she runs a lucrative scheme right in front of the U.S. Gov't's nose.
There are straight, great noir films with lesser plots, to tell the truth, but this one is filmed in a bright, flat way, with the camera often just sitting there as the actors go through their lines in the lights. Not that you need shadowy drama all the time, but drama, and a physical presence, and a higher sense of style and art. Director William Nigh has a whole slew of these B-movies to his name, and he is often too functional for his own good.
