I Want to Live!
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.58 You Save: $8.40 (56%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.98 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of I Want to Live!
Movie Review: Great Performance - Worth a Look
Summary: 4 Stars
Susan Hayward gives a dazzling performance in this dark film and is supported by an outstanding cast. A must for all Film Noir fans! Definitely worth seeing.Movie Review: Jazz Score is Good -- Truth takes a Beating
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie is good for entertainment only. The music is fabulous, and the story line is riveting.
HOWEVER, do not confuse this film with the factual story of one Barbara Graham, convicted of murder and executed at San Quentin on June 3, 1955.
OK for entertainment but unfortunately at the expense of truth, Ms. Graham is not recognizable in the character played by Susan Hayward. Ms. Graham was a tough, heroin-addicted, 2-bit street prostitute who had already left behind 3 previous husbands and 2 other children before she deserted Henry Graham and their toddler. She saw an opportunity to participate in a burglary where the potential prize was up to several hundred thousand dollars kept in a safe in a Burbank residence. An elderly, handicapped lady lived there. Ms. Graham was asked by the Santo-Perkins gang to knock on her door and pretend to have car trouble since she might not open it to strange men at night. Two of the five people who invaded that house implicated Barbara in the actual violence. One of those men (Baxter Shorter) was kidnapped and murdered before he could testify in court. The other (John True) turned state's evidence.
Before he died, the warden at San Quentin who supervised her execution told two different people what a burden it was for him to carry around Barbara's confession and keep it to himself for so long. She had told the warden that she had indeed split open Mrs. Monahan's head. The warden had asked the confession to be kept a secret since he didn't want to be the one who caused her family and friends to hear of her actual guilt if they thought her innocent. He felt that correctional staff had no business with guilt or innocence anyway and should just carry out the orders of the court.
The entire reason there was ANY controversy over who invaded the Monahan home, beat her savagely, and then smothered her with a pillowcase, was because of the misleading, untruthful movie "I Want To Live."
Movie Review: Desperately Seeking Oscar
Summary: 3 Stars
After slighting her nominated work in "I'll Cry Tomorrow," "Smash-Up," and "With a Song in My Heart," all better pictures and performances, Hollywood finally gave Susan Hayward an Oscar for this true crime drama. It's an anti-capital punishment tract about Barbara Graham, a petty crime hustler who became the first woman gassed to death by the State of California. Although found guilty by a jury, the movie infers her innocence, framed by fellow low-lifes for the robbery murder of a widow.
Hayward, a true studio star, pulls out all the emotional stops and exercises all her actressy tricks: the cocky defiance, the lightening twist of neck and body, the abrasive voice, the soulful eyes, etc. She accumulated enough of them in her career to create a distinctive acting style. Sooner or later Oscar was bound to come calling. "I Want to Live!" isn't a bad movie, as polemics go, but it's such a dishonest one that even Hayward's crafty hysteria can't totally redeem it (a terrifc jazz score helps, however.)
It stresses her love for her son, ignoring the other children she had and neglected; it asserts her innocence, never mind her last minute confession to San Quentin's warden; it gives us a "good time party girl" instead of the cheap prostitute, heroin junkie and proud ex-con Graham herself said she was. Here she enters the gas chamber a martyr, surrounded at her request by the very reporters who vilified her, and emerges an anti-death penalty icon.
Hayward's husband, Walter Wagner, produced on a low-budget that oddly complements the loud, tawdry locales and characters. Simon Oakland plays the real reporter upon whose trashy exposes the picture is partly based (his change of heart is briefly conveyed.) Director Robert Wise does ellicit some pity for Graham in the tensely detailed preamble to her execution, which ends the film. And that's doubtless when Hollywood began engraving Hayward's Oscar.
Movie Review: I want to live
Summary: 3 Stars
I had seen this movie years ago and was not disappointed watching it again. The company sent the product in excellent condition and in a timely manner. I would not hesitate ordering from this distributor again.Movie Review: Catered Susan Hayward movie
Summary: 1 Stars
I can't believe I'm the only one to give this a negative review. There was only one reason this movie was made and that was to give the oscar to Susan. Daring prison drama hardly! Hayward screams, whines, and jumps on her cot for two hours. The movie is also very dated.