The Strange Woman
by Edgar G. Ulmer
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Edward Biby, Hillary Brooke, Jessie Arnold, Louis Hayward, Olive BlakeneyDirector: Edgar G. Ulmer
Cinematographer: Lucien Andriot
Composer: Carmen Dragon
Editor: James Newcom
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 99 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-12-21
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Alpha Video
Movie Reviews of The Strange Woman
Movie Review: Hollywood moral hypocrisy made for the delectation of all those holier-than-thou ticket buyers. Not bad at all
Summary: 4 Stars
It's the old story...woman with her lascivious, tempting ways turns man into a beast or a weakling, and all because of the lust she's held responsible for arousing in his...ah...heart.
"I always lose happiness...I can't seem to hold it," says Jenny Hager (Hedy Lamar), daughter of the town drunk. Jenny is poor and beautiful beyond most schoolboys' dreams. She is determined to use that beauty to marry a rich man. It's the 1840's in Bangor, Maine, and the older man she sets her sights on is the leading merchant in town. Isaiah Poster's eyes on her tell us what he wants, and one day she allows herself to be whipped by her drunken father so that she can run to Isaiah and plead protection. It's not long before she has married this middle-aged, fat tycoon, the richest man in Bangor. And before long, when she meets Ephraim Poster (Louis Hayward), Isaiah's son who is her age, you can see Jenny knows that money with youth will be more fun than money with age. Then she meets John Evered (George Sanders), who works for her husband as a woods boss, in charge of the lumbermen who log the timber old Ephraim owns. That John is engaged to her best friend doesn't stop Jenny's evaluation of things: Riches plus youth plus vigor is better than riches plus youth. As Jenny says, "Men like me...and it's men that have the money in this world!"
Well, folks, be prepared to see one man die in a river torrent, another man die at the end of a rope and a look of disgust cross a third man's face. If you think this movie has a happy ending, you haven't been reading your Bible lately. The Strange Woman is a strange hybrid of Eugene O'Neill and parts of Forever Amber. The hypocrisy that oozes like spoiled milk from this movie makes only one point: A woman who uses her sexuality and her smarts must be up to no good, even if the men in her life are drunks, boors, weaklings and prigs. She must pay the price for being hot stuff. Jenny is a complicated woman, made up of equal parts compassion, resentment, ambition and sex...and she's a woman who loves a challenge. She finds ways to help the poor. She steps forward to enlarge the church to keep the grog shops small, to pay the doctor's bills of the sick, to send teachers up to the families where the loggers work. Her crime seems to be that of having a calculating willingness to use her sexual allure to better herself and get her way. "It wasn't by knowing how to set a table that Cleopatra got along" she says at one point.
Edgar Ulmer, a B-movie director who for once in his life was given a proper budget with name actors, turns in a product which moves right along. There are some nice scenes, including a sexual setup in a lightning storm that is dramatic as all get out. Some think that the look of the movie and the inevitable retribution qualifies it as a noir. Maybe. But the movie itself is all melodrama, with an obvious script and a corny music score that undercuts whatever dramatic interest there might have once been. Hedy Lamar does an impressive job portraying Jenny. Lamar was a beautiful and smart woman, a better actress than most gave her credit for, and now, unfortunately, is remembered mainly as a Mel Brooks joke in Blazing Saddles. George Sanders doesn't bring much to the party as John Evered. He's not very believable in rough clothes as the woods boss, and later he comes off as an uncomfortable person to have as a soul mate. Louis Hayward is the real mystery. Hayward was a competent, versatile actor, believable in drama, light comedy and period adventures. He chose, or his contract chose for him, to play a weakling for whom we mainly feel pity tinged with contempt. However, he and Lamar, and Gene Lockhart as Isaiah, carry the acting load. Perhaps that's what Hayward saw in the part.
The Strange Woman, in my view, is not a movie to make fun of even if it's overwrought. The lesson lies in what Hollywood sees as proper justice for a woman who is just as willing to use and enjoy her sexuality as a man does. Well, okay, that's a little film-historian sounding. But the movie still smells of self-satisfied hypocrisy.
The movie is in the public domain so don't expect much. The version I have is a little better than just watchable.
Summary of The Strange Woman
Studio: Gotham (dba Alpha) Release Date: 07/27/2004Drama DVD Video
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