Raymond Blur
Daddy’s out of focus! Daddy’s out of focus!
New at The Chiseler — I dig into CRIME OF PASSION, a late noir, late Stanwyck with an “all-women-are-bad/mad” vibe partially redeemed/complicated by scripted ambiguities and Stanwyck’s typically powerful work.
Gerd SCREAMING MIMI Oswald directs at a suitable pitch of hysteria.
Starring Phyllis Dietrichson, General Jack D. Ripper, Lars Thorwald, Ann Darrow, Orvil Newton, Tom Fury and Count Yorga.
shadowplay 
September 29, 2018 at 4:12 pm
Yes, I saw this one. It was a product of post-war ideology of the woman belonging to the home and not having an independent career of her own. This film could be viewed “against the grain” despite its reactionary manifest text.
September 29, 2018 at 5:39 pm
Yes, the saving grace for me is that she’s competent and well-adjusted UNTIL she acquires a home and husband. The things women are supposed to want are ruinous for her.
September 29, 2018 at 9:34 pm
The ideology of woman belonging to the home and not having an independent career of her own is still very much with us.. More than ever in fact. The “Doxa” (as Barthes put it) chafes at any autonomy a woman might gain consequently abortion is an affront to the power structure that women want “barefoot and pregnant”
In film noir men all and/or drift into crime. Women invariably set out to commit it.
September 29, 2018 at 11:09 pm
This one is kind of an exception then, as Stanwyck starts by merely conspiring to help her husband’s career. It’s a drift that ends in murder when she goes as far as she can and it doesn’t work. It’s exciting when she starts using the skills she learned as a reporter for this new project, which feels very much like a solution to boredom rather than a real belief in hubby’s greatness. His job keeps him away from her so she finds a way to take an interest.
It would have been more enjoyable and transgressive if she’d had more fun doing it.
September 30, 2018 at 12:26 am