Question: what other 1950s proto-feminist film featured Sterling Hayden and, in a supporting role, Royal Dano? Answer, of course: "Johnny Guitar," inimitable classic with its powerful women and fumbling men, its lesbian undercurrent and all-female shootout. "Crime of Passion" is not a classic. It has no lesbian undercurrent. But it does offer a powerful woman (Barbara Stanwyck). She struggles against the stifling male dominion in which she is bound until she commits a passionate crime for which she will pay. At least I think that is the idea of "Crime of Passion." But it works out that idea, if that is the idea, so bizzarely that it ends up defeating its own purpose and denying what it seems to be trying to say. Its attitude is so disconcerting that it's worth watching. It's worth showing, as a moment in women's history - a timid step forward and a scurrying retreat.
Everything revolves around Barbara Stanwyck's Kathy. She is a working woman, liberated, independent, self-sufficient. A troglodytic male (Royal Dano) says she'd be happier if she quit work, got married, made babies and cooked. She is indignant. But no. Evidently, he was right. She is unhappy in her independence. She's desperate to grab a man. (Why is not clear.) She's so desperate that she grabs Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden) after barely 48 hours' acquaintance and one brief dinner out. She gives up her career. She spurns a prestigious job offer in New York. She settles in as the stand-behind-your-man wife of an unambitious cop (who seems to have no understanding of or interest in her mental welfare). She's bored beyond belief. She can't endure the hollow, useless bourgeois existence. The men play small-stakes poker and ignore their wives who bustle about chatting inanely while the men ignore them. She nearly collapses agonized. So, what does she do? Does she tell him, "Bill, I need to work again; this suburban housewife routine is killing me," or words to that effect? No. She decides she will fulfill her life by fulfilling his. Then she can stand behind her man and endure the same deadly insipid cocktail parties, but he'll be a bigger man to be behind. That's it. All the rest involves her intrigue, using the usual feminine wiles, seducing the chief of detectives (Raymond Burr) to secure Bill advancement. The chief refuses to advance Bill. She shoots him. She kill him so clumsily, even though she is supposedly a clever, intelligent woman, that we can only assume she is now insane. Even I, who am not a master criminal, knew immediately that the cops would trace the gun she stole from their property room. She walks off distraught in her husband's custody, presumably to the gas chamber, or perhaps to a padded cell.
What does it mean? Is it a statement about the vacuity of women's lives? Their existence is to stifled it drives them to derangement. Or is it a warning? Women beware; stay in your place, or else look what happens. Maybe that confusion is the point. The buttoned-down '50s were not yet the go-go '60s. A betwixt and between movie reflects a time of transition. In any case, it is a strange little noir. If you can figure it out, I'd like to know.
Everything revolves around Barbara Stanwyck's Kathy. She is a working woman, liberated, independent, self-sufficient. A troglodytic male (Royal Dano) says she'd be happier if she quit work, got married, made babies and cooked. She is indignant. But no. Evidently, he was right. She is unhappy in her independence. She's desperate to grab a man. (Why is not clear.) She's so desperate that she grabs Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden) after barely 48 hours' acquaintance and one brief dinner out. She gives up her career. She spurns a prestigious job offer in New York. She settles in as the stand-behind-your-man wife of an unambitious cop (who seems to have no understanding of or interest in her mental welfare). She's bored beyond belief. She can't endure the hollow, useless bourgeois existence. The men play small-stakes poker and ignore their wives who bustle about chatting inanely while the men ignore them. She nearly collapses agonized. So, what does she do? Does she tell him, "Bill, I need to work again; this suburban housewife routine is killing me," or words to that effect? No. She decides she will fulfill her life by fulfilling his. Then she can stand behind her man and endure the same deadly insipid cocktail parties, but he'll be a bigger man to be behind. That's it. All the rest involves her intrigue, using the usual feminine wiles, seducing the chief of detectives (Raymond Burr) to secure Bill advancement. The chief refuses to advance Bill. She shoots him. She kill him so clumsily, even though she is supposedly a clever, intelligent woman, that we can only assume she is now insane. Even I, who am not a master criminal, knew immediately that the cops would trace the gun she stole from their property room. She walks off distraught in her husband's custody, presumably to the gas chamber, or perhaps to a padded cell.
What does it mean? Is it a statement about the vacuity of women's lives? Their existence is to stifled it drives them to derangement. Or is it a warning? Women beware; stay in your place, or else look what happens. Maybe that confusion is the point. The buttoned-down '50s were not yet the go-go '60s. A betwixt and between movie reflects a time of transition. In any case, it is a strange little noir. If you can figure it out, I'd like to know.