Make Haste to Live

Make Haste to Live is directed by William A. Seiter and adapted to screenplay by Warren B. Duff from the novel written by Gordon and Mildred Gordon. It stars Dorothy McGuire, Stephen McNally, Mary Murphy and Edgar Buchanan. Music is by Elmer Bernstein and cinematography by John L. Russell.

A gangster is sentenced to prison for killing his wife, but she isn't dead, she's alive and well and raising her daughter in New Mexico. It's now 18 years later and he's out of the big house; and he wants revenge!

Elmer Bernstein's superb musical score opens up the picture and Russell uses film noir filters to photograph the gripping opening sequences. It's a handsome beginning, the promise of a film noir gem is palpable, sadly the entire middle hour is plodding in pacing and ridiculous in plotting. There's some neat touches, McNally is permanently angry and sinister, which makes for good fun, McGuire works hard to maintain interest, Buchanan's gruff sheriff steps outside of the norm and the odd scene, such as that involving a fairground, have noirish leanings. The finale as well is of high quality, but patience is tested throughout and there's the over riding feeling that the cast, Bernstein, Russell and the audience deserve a far better script. 5/10

The best part is the first : one does not know why Dorothy macGuire awakes in fear at night,why she's so frightened,why she entrusts a hefty sum of money to someone she can depend on; when one learns the reason why ,it's a little disappointing and derivative ; the screenplay does not make any sense and Stephen McNally's - although ideally cast as the villain- motives are not clearly defined ; for good measure ,there's even a love rivalry a la "imitation of life" between mother and daughter,which is rather ludicrous ,in this case!

The use of the Indian excavations ,particularly the funeral chamber , redeems somewhat the movie in the last scenes .A good beginning and a suspenseful ending ,you make it on the percentages ,but lose out on the bonuses: average.

Make Haste to Live showed me once again what an inexhaustible source of good movies Classic Hollywood was. I've seen many but there's always another one and the treasure chest seems to have no bottom. This is a small film, in black and white but with a wider format than the traditional one. It was produced and directed for Republic Pictures by William Seiter based on a script by Warren Duff. It is a noir story, set in a small town in the State of New Mexico where life is peaceful and predictable. There, in the local newspaper works as an editor Crystal Benson (Dorothy McGuire) a supposed widow with her daughter Randy (Mary Murphy) of 18 years who is about to graduate from high school. But at night, she has nightmares, because the past is about to take its revenge. In reality Randy's father was a gang member named Steve (Steven McNally) who has just left prison after a long sentence for the supposed murder of his wife Zena. In reality, Zena has changed her name and is now Crystal, and when she ran away from her husband, she was pregnant and not thinking clearly. Her friend Rose (Carolyn Jones, the famous Morticia of the Addams Family) tried to explain Zena's situation but was not convincing and, faced with the doubt and the unidentified corpse that implicated Steve, the latter ended up being sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the town, the sheriff is Edgar Buchanan, an actor who played countless supporting roles in westerns and other genres. And we also meet Crystal's long-suffering suitor, Josh, played by another efficient B-movie actor, John Howard, a former pilot during the Second World War and now a scholar of the labyrinthine dwellings built by the Indians who inhabited the region, the Pueblo tribe.

Things will get heated in this interesting thriller in which I will not fail to praise the exceptional performance of the two main characters, Dorothy McGuire and Stephen McNally. Every time they are together, and luckily it is a big part of the film, the level of tension and drama rises. She appears calm but is actually desperate and he is perversely threatening like a volcano about to erupt. It is worth seeing them act.

Eighteen years ago, Dorothy McGuire was married to Stephen McNally, who turned out to be a very bad man. After he had beaten a murder rap and he had hit her, she ran away. By happenstance, a different woman was blown up in their home, he was convicted of murdering Miss McGuire - apparently the corpse was in teeny-tiny pieces - and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Miss McGuire moved to a small town in the desert, raised their daughter to become Mary Murphy, and publish and edit the local paper. Now, however, McNally has gotten out of prison. He's tracked her down and intends to punish her.

I can't really blame him. She couldn't have sent a picture of herself holding a current newspaper?

Despite this and other holes in the plot, this is a very entertaining movie, half soap opera, half crime drama, with some very engaging performances among the leads, and Edgar Buchanan just right as the canny local sheriff. William A. Seiter's last movie as director is no world-beater because of the plot holes, but John Russell's camerawork around Taos, New Mexico, and an early Elmer Bernstein score help to burnish this movie into a pretty good one.

The spooky opening sequence piques our appetite for Make Haste to Live. A sinister stranger looms in the bedroom where Dorothy McGuire tosses in restive sleep. The editor of a small-town newspaper in the New Mexico desert, she's being stalked by her husband, a gangster just released from the pen for murder -- HER murder. Seems that years before, in Chicago, a woman was killed in an rigged explosion; when the body was identified as hers, McGuire packed up and started a new life.

But having set up this intriguing situation, Make Haste to Live loses its way and ends up a muddled mess. When the husband (Steven McNally) insinuates himself into the household of McGuire and their teenage daughter, he's passed off as a black-sheep brother. And credulity gets strained way past the snapping point. McGuire flip-flops between resourceful adversary and the most feckless of battered wives; at times the two roil with hatred for one another but at others a light flirtatiousness enters their interactions. Any valid psychology in this, however, isn't worked out in dramatic terms; we get no sense of the hold McNally has over his wife, only that he wants to kill her and she seems willing to die.

A Bottomless Pit in an old Indian pueblo makes an early appearance but doesn't end up playing the role we come to expect it will; so the final resolution is contrived, coming not out of character but out of the blue. Moseying along from one thing to another, Make Haste to Live has no urgent destination in mind.