Crime of Passion

For a movie with the word passion in the title this modest 1957 noir wannabe never builds up a head of steam. It tells the tale of a successful San Francisco Dear Abby-type columnist who inexplicably falls in love with a taciturn, unambitious police officer from Los Angeles. After a whirlwind romance, these two lovebirds settle down to a life of dull domesticity in L.A. Though the woman has given up her writing career, she soon finds that she's too intelligent and ambitious to be a housewife. She encourages her husband to seek advancement in the police department, but politics isn't his thing. He likes being where he is. Rather than do the smart thing, and return to writing, the woman becomes a meddler, and in time gets into deep personal doo-doo.

There's nothing in this movie that hasn't been done before and better. It doesn't feel like an independent production from the late fifties but rather like an RKO thriller from six or seven years earlier. And not one of the better ones. Director Gerd Oswald has proved himself elsewhere to be at times a superb craftsman, but Jo Eisingers by the numbers script conspire with mediocre production values to defeat him. And down he goes. What makes the movie somewhat watchable is the acting. Barbara Stanwyck gives her all to the role of a career woman who, though smart enough, maybe lacks the experience to see that the average joe she falls for, though amiable in his gruff way, is simply not the man for her. I find her performance believable. As her hubby, the towering Sterling Hayden, he of the sullen expression and morose, inexplicably angry line readings, is likewise okay, though I sense that he's not always focused on his acting. I've seen him do tighter work. In a smaller but pivotal role Raymond Burr is his usual polite, somewhat impassive, inscrutable self, bringing authority and, well, weight, to his role as Hayden's superior. Interestingly, all three performers were nearing the end of a particular phase of his career. Stanwyck was soon to quit movies for television, and when she returned it was as a character actress. Hayden was just about to quit movies, too, though like Stanwyck he would go on to interesting things later. And Burr was soon to triumph on television as Perry Mason, leaving behind a decade's worth of good character work in film, of which this is one of the last examples.

... is who Kathy (Barbara Stanwyck) is. She's a reporter on a paper that usually gives her lonely hearts column assignments, but then she gets a chance to report on the case of a woman who has killed her lover. She writes a sympathetic column in which she encourages the woman to call her and talk, she does, and as a result Kathy finds out where she is hiding. Then she encounters the cheerless LAPD detective Charlie Alidos who tells her to give up the woman's location or he'll have her arrested, indicating that she should be home cooking dinner for her non-existent husband. Kathy gives Alidos a bum steer as far as the woman's location because she'd rather give this arrest to Alidos' partner, Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden), but he sets her straight that he and Alidos are partners and you just don't do that to your partner.

Kathy gets a new job in a different city as a result of her helping break this case, but her new romance with Bill Doyle is getting in the way, and they marry in haste when she makes one of her trips back to California to see him. As was the custom in the 50s, she stops working and becomes a housewife. But being a wife and in particular the wife of a cop in the 50s is particularly boring, and she is soon going nuts from the constant company of the Stepford wives who comprise the wives of the cops who come over to play cards with Bill a few times a week. She also discovers that Bill is not particularly ambitious. He just thinks being a cop is a pretty secure job with OK pay and good retirement prospects and that is the end of it for him.

So Kathy starts out to be ambitious for Bill if he will not be so for himself. She studies the driving habits of the wife of the head of detectives, Tony Pope (Raymond Burr) and manages to maneuver an "auto accident" with her, befriends her, and gets herself and Bill invited to their house for their parties. But almost immediately Tony Pope lets her know he has her number, knows the accident was planned, and that she is trying to get her husband promoted. But he is also obviously fascinated with her. At this point, if Kathy just wanted to promote her husband, she'd give this effort up since Pope has her cold busted. But she still hangs around Pope until an affair occurs. Why? Because Kathy likes the danger and excitement of dealing with Pope versus the ennui of being just another housewife. But Pope himself has a conscience and cuts off contact with her as a result of him feeling bad for betraying and cheating on both Bill and his own wife. This is when Kathy's actions become erratic and also, just plain dumb. Complications ensue.

I particularly liked seeing Raymond Burr as the rather enigmatic chief of detectives. Not a white knight as he was in Perry Mason, but also not one his psychopathic characters when he was starring in the noirs, it was a nuanced role for him. Also note he is close to a normal weight here. This was made just as he was starting out on Perry Mason, and one of the conditions of getting that role was that he lose 60 pounds.

'Crime of Passion' had all the ingredients to be a good film. It even had all the ingredients to be a great film. The title is attention grabbing enough, but it is also hard to resist any film that has the wonderful Barbara Stanwyck heading the cast. Loved the idea for the story and it is a type of film that you'd see me particularly enjoy. It was interesting seeing Sterling Hayden playing against type and Raymond Burr in a role different to his iconic Perry Mason.

While it is a worth a look (it takes a lot for me to deem anything these days a must avoid), though namely for the cast, there was a much better film somewhere in 'Crime of Passion' that didn't fully make it out. So considering what it had going for it, part of me was disappointed by 'Crime of Passion' while far from disliking it. Would have liked it a lot more if the story was a lot stronger and more focused, because it was that component that brought things down by a too significant degree.

There are a number of good things in 'Crime of Passion'. The best thing about it is the cast. Stanwyck's role is not an easy one to pull off, but she pulls it off very well. There is her usual steel, yet never in a cold way, and how effortlessly she commands the screen, while also giving a little vulnerability. It has been said that she was too old for the role, maybe but actually it didn't distract me that much. Hayden's character on paper sounds dull, but that's not how his own performance came over as and he does great at coming over as level-handed and sympathetic. Burr is distinguished yet menacing as a charmer with a (very) dark side sort of character. Fay Wray does nicely in a role different to her role in 'King Kong' and it was fun seeing Royal Dano as a work rival.

It's not just the cast. It's assuredly directed by Gerd Oswald and the film looks great. Although the story could have done with more atmosphere, the production values are hardly bereft of them. The photography is especially first class. The ominous but not too obviously so score helps too. There are moments where the script thought provokes and has snap, the social commentary is very interesting and insightful. There is intrigue and the film does start off very well.

Sadly, the latter parts of 'Crime of Passion' aren't as strong in particular. While a good deal of the pace is assured and not too filler-like, some of it does lag and if the script was tauter and not as routine or soggy as it at times was that would have made things better. The story loses focus and could have done with a lot more suspense.

Also felt that the story did get far-fetched and not always easy to follow. Capped off by an ending that was too convenient and almost implausible, the writing for the lead character not making much sense.

Definitely worth a viewing, but really wanted to love it and ended up being fairly neutral. 6/10

Don't be put off by the negative commentary on this film (which surprises me almost as much as the film's unflinching social critique). Stanwyck gives a strong performance in an unusual late-cycle noir; unusual in that it opens in conventional noir style, wraps up the first noir plot in less than ten minutes, then proceeds into insightful and incisive melodrama. Sharper socially than even Fritz Lang's late noirs, "Crime of Passion" reminds us of the "nostalgia" for the "happy family values" of the 1950's for the wishful (?) thinking that it is. Stanwyck's slow descent into middle-class torpor and madness (she's a sharp, witty, intelligent woman who saddles herself with a maddeningly boring and conventional cop husband, played nicely against type by Sterling Hayden) lays bare the social nightmare presented to women desiring anything but the conventional patriarchal lifestyle (at one point, the LA police captain tells Stanwyck that she should be at home making her husband supper-- a line which haunts both Stanwyck and the film).

It was interesting to read that Barbara Stanwyck feels the same way I do that the first thing a film should have is a good story. Sometimes some good acting can smooth over some glaring faults in the story, some time it can't. Even the brilliant pyrotechnics of Barbara Stanwyck couldn't quite bring Crime Of Passion off.

It's a strange film because her character makes absolutely no sense, accept in terms of hormones. She's a sob sister columnist for a quaint metropolitan newspaper in San Francisco and she's gotten a murderess on the run to write to her. Which of course draws the attention of a couple of homicide cops played by Sterling Hayden and Royal Dano.

Dano is all business and he wants a lead on where to catch the woman. But Stanwyck is eying Hayden like a prime rump roast in the butcher shop and she sends Dano off on a false lead, but gives the real goods to Hayden. So much for her job as reporter and protecting sources. Hayden doesn't go for it, but the two of them hit it off anyway and are soon happily married.

For a career woman, Stanwyck seems to settle down to housewife bliss, but she seethes with ambition for her husband to rise in the department. Hayden's a happy go lucky sort who just takes things as they come. Not good enough, she sets her mind to promoting her husband and if that includes giving a little nookie to his boss Raymond Burr behind the back of his wife Fay Wray, so be it.

Her change from career woman to sexual manipulator in Crime Of Passion makes no sense at all. She's a bad woman all right, right up there with her Oscar nominated Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity. But whereas Phyllis was one ice princess, this Stanwyck does things on the fly. Her crime when she commits it is indeed one of passion.

This was not a film Stanwyck was particularly happy about, but she said that good stories for her and her contemporaries in the Fifties were hit or miss basis. Sadly Crime Of Passion is the latter.