The Strange Woman
100 min. / B&W / 1.33:1 / DTS HD-MA 2.0 MONO / SDH
Film Masters Blu-ray $23.99
Available from Movie Zyng
Hedy Lamarr produced and stars in a romantic drama as a gorgeous young woman with few career options beyond sleeping her way to financial security and destroying lives on her path to greatness, except Miss Lamarr the producer seems to want to be sure she’s a sympathetic character and so there’s no sleeping with anybody and minimal life destroying happening, and we get the lamest excuse for a happy ending ever in a movie that’s simply terrible, despite what anybody else might tell you. I don’t enjoy writing reviews of awful movies but if I had to endure it, so will you. And I’ll mention now in case you want to skip down to the end that at the least, Film Masters does another excellent job of revitalizing a public domain film for home viewers and it's a film not without interest due to its pedigree.
The Strange Woman was based on a novel by Ben Ames Williams, and the film version of his Leave Her to Heaven was a big hit and great film and great role for Gene Tierney a year earlier, so this book seemed like a great bet for Miss Lamarr, who brought in Edgar G. Ulmer to direct and put together an independent production company with enough money to make what passes for an A picture and has a superior supporting cast. Unfortunately, the backdrop – Maine in the 19th century, timber country – didn’t lend itself to the budget they had, and you’ll find almost no outdoor scenes despite good intentions, with the money going to opulent indoor sets. Miss Lamarr is an ambitious, very beautiful woman (typecasting!) and flirts her way into matrimony with elderly widower Gene Lockhart (who’s excellent in the film) but has eyes for his handsome college student son, Louis Hayward (who brings what he can to the role, but hey, we’re talking about Louis Hayward here) and then decides that she REALLY loves her best friend’s fiancé, George Sanders, cast as a lumberman and if casting George Sanders as a lumberman doesn’t give you an idea of the ineptitude of this film, I don’t know what would. After nearly 2 hours of this mess, Miss Lamarr finally decides to give up her wicked ways, but neither the plot nor the Hays Office would allow her off the hook that easily.
Over the years, The Strange Woman has been touted as an “overlooked” key part of the careers of both Hedy Lamarr and Edgar G. Ulmer, but the truth is, it’s not so much “overlooked” as “purposely buried due to disinterest.” The terrific supporting cast (including Abbott & Costello foil Hillary Brooke) and beautiful interior sets as well as just the ability to admire the aesthetic appeal if not the talent or accent of our leading lady are the reasons to watch this.
Film Masters has cleaned it up and even provided commentary and liner notes by Prof. Bernard Prokop, and we were anxious to sample that commentary to find out what he had to report, but we ended up listening to quite a bit of it because it was fascinating. The good professor had a relatively positive appreciation for the film, but went off on so many tangents and there were so many lengthy periods of no talk from him at all that we were convinced he was nodding off and forgetting what he was discussing. Still, you Oppenheimer fans will want to listen to this for a greater appreciation of that film’s editing sophistication. Don't ask me, ask the Professor.
Strange woman? Strange film.
