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4.0 out of 5 stars
"A Woman's Secret (1949) ... Maureen O'Hara ... RKO Radio Pictures", March 4, 2007
This review is from: A Woman's Secret [VHS] (VHS Tape)
RKO Radio Pictures present "A WOMAN'S SECRET" (1949) (85 mins/B&W) (Dolby digitally remastered) --- Starring Maureen O'Hara, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Grahame, Bill Williams & Victor Jory, directed by Nicholas Ray and released in March 5, 1949, our story line and film is an early gem from Nicholas Ray, who would go on to greater things, but who shows his abilities here ... told in flashback, it's the story that leads to the death of singer Susan revealed as the ungrateful, selfish and deceitful protége of Marian, who has devoted her life to making Susan's career a success after her own ambitions had been thwarted --- Good cast in a well directed story.
Under Nicholas Ray (Director), Herman J. Mankiewicz (Producer), Vicki Baum (novel Mortgage on Life), Herman J. Mankiewicz (Screenwriter), Nacio Herb Brown (Original Music), Frederick Hollander (Original Score), George E. Diskant (Cinematographer), Sherman Todd (Editor), Clark Burke (Production Design), Carroll Clark (Art Direction), Albert S. D'Agostino (Art Direction), Harley Miller (Set Decoration), Darrell Silvera (Set Decoration), Edward Stevenson (Costume Design), Gordon Bau (Makeup Artist), Doran Cox (Assistant Director), Clem Portman (Sound Dept), Francis M. Sarver (Sound Dept),.Earl A. Wolcott (Sound Dept), Russell A. Cully (Special Effects) - - - - the cast includes Maureen O'Hara (Marian Washburn), Melvyn Douglas (Luke Jordan), Gloria Grahame (Susan Caldwell aka Estrellita), Bill Williams (Lee Crenshaw), Victor Jory (Brook Matthews), Mary Philips (Mrs. Mary Fowler), Jay C. Flippen (Police Insp. Jim Fowler), Robert Warwick (Assistant District Attorney Roberts), Curt Conway (Doctor), Ann Shoemaker (Mrs. Matthews, Brook's Mother),Virginia Farmer (Mollie the Washburn Maid), Ellen Corby (Nurse who reads paper to Susan), Emory Parnell (Police Lieutenant at Desk) - - - - - Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic mediums as well...the low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with the classic mode are in the tradition of chiaroscuro and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by 15th- and 16th-century painters associated with Mannerism and the Baroque...film noir's aesthetics are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, scultpture, and architecture...opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners...Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German M, is among the first major crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). M was also the occasion for the first star performance by Peter Lorre, who would go on to act in several formative American noirs of the classic era ... featuring top performances from the '40s and '50s with outstanding drama and screenplays, along with a wonderful cast and supporting actors to bring it all together ... another winner from the vaults of almost forgotten film noir gems
SPECIAL FEATURES BIOS:
1. Maureen O'Hara (aka: Maureen Fitzsimons)
Date of birth: 17 August 1920 - Ranelagh, County Dublin, Ireland (now Ranelagh, Dublin, Ireland)
Date of death: Still Living
2. Nicholas Ray (aka: Raymond Nicholas Kienzle)
Date of birth: 7 August 1911 - Galesville, Wisconsin
Date of death: 16 June 1979 - New York, New York
Hats off and thanks to Les Adams (collector/guideslines for character identification), Chuck Anderson (Webmaster: The Old Corral/B-Westerns.Com), Boyd Magers (Western Clippings), Bobby J. Copeland (author of "Trail Talk"), Rhonda Lemons (Empire Publishing Inc), Bob Nareau (author of "The Real Bob Steele") and Trevor Scott (Down Under Com) as they have rekindled my interest once again for Film Noir, B-Westerns and Serials --- looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage serial era of the '20s, '30s & '40s and B-Westerns ... order your copy now from Amazon where there are plenty of copies available on VHS, stay tuned once again for top notch action mixed with deadly adventure --- if you enjoyed this title, why not check out VCI Entertainment where they are experts in releasing B-Westerns and Serials --- all my heroes have been cowboys!
Total Time: 85 min on VHS ~ Turner Home Video ~ (1/23/1991)
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