directed by Fritz Lang
Once again, Grahame plays a woman for whom the John Lee Hooker lyric "She wiggles when she walks! She wiggle!" was likely invented but her character here is less self-assured and to my mind much more sympathetic. It's also a much meatier role than the simple good time girl with a sharp tongue and taste for furs that she nailed in The Big Heat.
If this movie were remade today it would almost certainly have a different ending and likely "corrected" sex stereotypes that would be just as cartoonish as some thought that the sex stereotypes of the 50s were. So it goes. This film addresses issues that resonate today. I am struck by how slender most of the cast, including the extras, were. Obviously I noticed this first on the women but very few of the men were plus sized either. Sugar has warped our society, but that's another post.
Jeff Warren (Ford) is a train engineer and Korean war vet. He just got back from the war and started working again. Jeff is happy. He's alive and has all his limbs. Jeff rents a room in the home of his good friends Alec and Vera Simmons (Edgar Buchanan and Diane Delaire).
One young lady who is interested in Jeff is Ellen Simmons (Kathleen Case), Alec and Vera's daughter who has, judging by Jeff's reaction, matured nicely while he was away.
But even though Ellen throws all sort of hints at Jeff, even playfully interrogating him about other women he might be seeing, Jeff ignores or misses those hints. Jeff thinks that Ellen is too young for him, even though the actress playing her was twenty-one or twenty-two at this time. Carl Buckley (Broderick Crawford) is another railroad employee. Many organizations have a designated scapegoat, someone blamed for other people's mistakes. At this railroad that's Carl. Perhaps it's because Carl could stand to drop some weight?
Flabby or not, Carl quickly loses his cool when he's unfairly criticized. He can get mean and thuggish. When he's drunk he gets even meaner. Although he takes a lot of shots, Carl gives back plenty. So Carl is shocked when he's fired after a verbal snapback at his boss. Desperate, Carl begs for his job back only to be further humiliated and again rebuffed.
From the way Vicki stiffens when she hears Owens' name to her initial refusal to speak to Owens, it's painfully obvious to a modern audience (and likely would have been to the 50s audience as well) why the otherwise supportive and vivacious Vicki is reluctant to help. Carl's persistence drags in Jeff and leads to unforeseen consequences that will change everyone's lives forever.
I really liked Grahame's work here. You might as well. Vicki feels trapped and makes some bad decisions. But Vicki is not an evil person. This film has some interesting things to say about regrets, timing, male jealousy, double standards between men and women, and the blindness that love and its counterpart lust can engender in everyone.
The movie lets the viewer decide if Vicki is manipulative and wicked in a true femme fatale sense or is just a scared woman using the only tools she has. Ford is okay as the decent man who might be making the mistake of choosing what looks good over what is good, but this is Grahame's film thru and thru.
