"Sudden Fear" Review

 

by Daniel White

"You'll want to put your Chicago lipstick on, I'll wait for you in the lounge car," Jack Palance tells Joan Crawford in RKO's Sudden Fear, a 1952 film that I am comfortable in calling a film noir.

A woman in distress flick, Sudden Fear, boasts an accomplished performance by Crawford, which is high praise from me since she's probably my least favorite leading lady from the Golden Age of Hollywood (only Claudette Colbert leaves me feeling colder).

In it, she plays Myra Hudson, San Franciscan socialite turned playwright who first fires actor Lester Blaine (Palance) from her newest play, then falls in love with him. It's a perilous mixture of soap opera and gritty noir, that teeters from the laughable to the genuine suspenseful. There is some real overbaked dialogue in this one but director David Miller and a committed cast of talented actors always make it watchable.

After a quickie courtship, our two attractive leads marry (with Crawford and Palance, it's a study in competing cheekbones, which Jack wins by an acquiline nose!). At first it's a bit ambivalent as to what Jack's motives are for marrying the wealthy, older Joan. But once Hollywood's number one slutty mantrap, Gloria Grahame, shows up, all ambivalence disappears as Jack and Gloria turn into the Bonnie and Clyde of Nob Hill.

From victim to intrepid sleuth, Joan plays an exciting game of vengeful cat to Jack's unwitting mouse when she discovers his unfaithfulness with bad girl Gloria and their scheme to do away with her. In a truly touching scene, Joan listens to the two plot her demise, with Jack grinding the salt into her wounds by declaring to Gloria that he never loved her (how she acquires this second-hand knowledge is a ludicrous plot twist that the movie unfortunately falls back on more than once). It's a seven minute tour-de-force for Crawford that she pulls off without speaking a single word. Just when I had written her off as being Hollywood's most unimaginative actress she pulls this remarkable acting stunt!

I don't like the woman very much but I do respect her. In thinking about her career today I realized that Joan Crawford has always been a leading lady! From flapper to shop girl to Mildred Pierce and beyond, she never stopped being a movie star and she never resorted to character roles when she got older. Few other women in La La land can make that claim, and almost none of them did it for as long as Crawford .

Sudden Fear may be a tad outlandish at times but it's also a compelling melodrama/noir that delivers a dramatic, exciting climax (that also contains a silly mistaken identity ploy!). Truly a movie where the phrase "from the sublime to the ridiculous" could be used as an astute summation.

Finally a word about the opening credits. If there was any doubt as to whether Joan Crawford was a movie star, one just needs to look at this page that is displayed in the beginning. Titled "Miss Crawford's Wardrobe", the lady gets an individual fashion/dress designer for her gowns, furs, lingerie, hats, and jewels! This is Hollywood excess at its most....well, ridiculous AND sublime! Bless you Joan Crawford, you certainly keep things interesting. Put on your "Chicago lipstick" indeed!

With Bruce Bennett (the former Mr. Pierce), Virginia Huston, a very young Mike "Touch" Conners, and a haunting theme song from Elmer Bernstein. Available on YouTube.