Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soo... Read allKathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.Kathy leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.
- Party Guest
- (uncredited)
- Reporter in Newspaper Office
- (uncredited)
- Minor Role
- (uncredited)
- Bartender
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe last film noir roles of both Barbara Stanwyck and Raymond Burr. It also comes towards the ends of their film careers in general. Both would soon transition to working primarily in television and appearing only occasionally in movies. Burr notably moved from the villainous characters he often portrayed in films to long-running success as the heroic defense attorney in Perry Mason (1957).
- GoofsWhen Kathy calls Alice from the phone booth and hears she is leaving for Honolulu, the reflection of the cameraman is seen all through the scene on the back window of the booth (above left Kathy's head), and it moves as the camera pulls back.
- Quotes
Kathy Doyle: I hope all your socks have holes in them and I can sit for hours and hours darning them.
Bill Doyle: I um, I have other plans for you.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Noir Alley: Crime of Passion (2017)
A gripping widescreen black and white crime film where the loner lost in a complacent world is a woman--played with steely determination by Barbara Stanwyck. In some ways this film is a familiar type, but it has some unique lines that open up as it goes until it becomes a unique tale of seduction and ambition.
You won't see Sterling Hayden better (this is around the time of his defining but more constrained role in Kubrick's "The Killing"), and throw in Raymond Burr and, believe it or not, Fay Ray (of "King Kong" fame, 1933), and you have quite a cast. It moves fast though there is some redundancy to the events sometimes--we get the idea of her ambition, for example, but they give us several examples of it instead of one good one. In general the writing is very smart and sometimes witty, in the hands of a late noir standard bearer, the woman writer Jo Eisinger.
The great dramatic photography is by legendary Joseph LaShelle, and it's all pulled together elegantly by director Gerd Oswald. Who's he? Good question...this is his most respected film (he also did the good "A Kiss Before Dying" which is streamable on Netflix). I think this is a lucky confluence of talents--Stanwyck of course, and Hayden, but also LaShelle and Burr and Eisinger.
It might be no coincidence that one of the themes, in fact the trigger for Stanwyck's change of character halfway through, is a revelation of sexual (gender) stereotypes--men play cards and silly things that sound important, and women sit in the next room not playing cards saying silly things that sound silly. At least in Eisinger's eyes. It's great stuff for 1957, and has more honesty than many later approaches to the problem. Stanwyck's solution, of course, is dubious. She plays a role she played in one of my favorite movies of hers, twenty some years earlier, in "Baby Face," where she sleeps her way to success.
A good one, late in the noir/crime era for this style, but so good it holds up well.
- secondtake
- Jan 6, 2011
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Love Story
- Filming locations
- Parker Center - 150 North Los Angeles Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA(Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, called Police Administration Building when filmed)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 26 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1