1948 Directed by Anatole Litvak
Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.
Brought to you by the Western Union Telegraph company.
"I'm a sick woman!" - Barbara Stanwyck.
What a mixed bag. On the one hand you've got a great cast.
"I'm a sick woman!" - Barbara Stanwyck.
But they spend most of the movie stationary and spouting exposition (mostly in flashback) while even the camera gets so bored it starts to look around rooms for lack of any action going on.
"I'm a sick woman!" - Barbara Stanwyck.
And then again, a few moments of photographic intrigue sneak their way past the mountain of extraneous details: silhouettes sneaking across a desolate beach at night heading for a dilapidated shack from which strange signals eminate. Secret packages are ferried away by motorboat…
Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster star in this suspense thriller. Stanwyck overhears a phone conversation about a possible murder at 11:15 that night. Story is told in flashback as we see the romance, marriage and struggles between Stanwyck and Lancaster. Story gets very confusing but is still interesting. Not as good as Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder....but decent. The 18th Lancaster movie I have watched...and ranked 14th on my Lancaster Cogerson Movie Score Table. cogersonmoviescore.com/burt-lancaster-movies-best-worst-box-office-gross.html
From its swift setup, wherein a brief phone call starts the plot in motion mere moments after the film starts, it becomes clear that this is crafted with a certain economy. It feels like a play (and was adapted from one, of course) given a little more momentum on the screen. As a mystery, it feels fairly uncompelling (guess who done it I bet you'll guess), and as a character study (which I don't think it was intended to be), it's a little irritating, centering on a woman in hysterics for 90 minutes--hysterics so severe they give her heart attacks on a regular basis blegh. Stanwyck seems to put her all into it, though.
The June / July Classic Crime Project: 1930-1969
List idea - 'movies starring wendell corey where someone is confined to their apartment and suspects a murder'.
What's fascinating about Sorry, Wrong Number is that Barbara Stanwyck hasn't been laid up by a physical issue like LB Jeffries in Rear Window, but rather has been crippled by an increasing number of steadily worsening panic attacks.
They don't call them that specifically here, for some odd reason, but it was surprising that a film from this age seemed to approach the subject with a reasonable amount of sensitivity. It always helps when you have an actor of Stanwyck's quality through which to syphon the subject, of course, but no little credit should…
Adapted by Lucille Fletcher, one of the leading female playwrights of her time from her 1943 radio play of the same name, Sorry, Wrong Number stays very true to its audio and stagey roots in Anatole Litvak's cinematic adaptation. It's been described as a classic example of film noir but there are strong doses of Alfred Hitchcock's penchant for dynamic leading ladies, henpecked males and shadowy twisty-turny plots in the mix here too, only without quite the same flair or expression. Litvak casts enough gloomy shadows to lend a sinister tone to proceedings but his direction often allows for some irritatingly overwrought performances, chiefly from Barbara Stanwyck, who nonetheless was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Leona…
The idea is brilliant. Some bits of direction too. Barbara Stanwyck is fantastic. Yet, the screenplay runs out of steam in the first half and it became too convulsed and unrealistic to really work. A bit of a missed occasion.
Watched as part of the August 2017 Letterboxd Scavenger Hunt
My list | Christian Alec's master list
#4: Watch a film starring a Summer Under the Stars on TCM star Barbara Stanwyck
2017 movie viewings, #117. I admit, I still have quite a few holes to fill before I'm anywhere near to being an expert on film noir; which is kind of odd, in that I've generally liked just about every noir I've ever seen, and have no particular aversion to older films, meaning that it's just been through random circumstance that my knowledge of this period of film history is so spotty, and not through deliberate design. Anyway, today's noir under discussion, 1948's Sorry, Wrong Number, definitely ranks up…
Film #28 of August 2017 Scavenger Hunt
Task #4: Watch a film starring a Summer Under the Stars on TCM star: Barbara Stanwyck.
So-so noir. It definitely never leaves its origins as a radio program and I think that hurts it more than anything else. Stanwyk did pretty well with her performance at least.
Stanwyck is impressive but script and direction lacks quality. The closeups of nervous fingers used several times are interestingly used several times with good effect. Memorable sequence: The white police officer answering the phone call of Stanwyck's character while attending to a lost black child sitting on his desk, crying and playing with his pocket watch.
Another classic that I'm a little surprised I hadn't seen before. It's quite good, and it's a tribute to Lucille Fletcher that this short, sharp radio thriller remains very interesting and fun transferred to the screen. As Leona makes and receives calls all over town, various evocative scenes and scenarios give a sense of the "community," as it were, and also expertly piece the plot together, and the pace drives towards its inevitable, spine-chilling conclusion. It's one of those films that, if you go with it and are willing to surrender to it, it really works.
Paradoxically, and I'm sure this was true of many darker films, the leads have such star power that, even though these are bad people,…
Hitch-knock-off...
Knowing how easy it was back in the day to let a film be lost forever due to inappropriate storage of the print, mishandling or the plain old celluloid fire, one could easily develop a form of bias that tells you that all old films are worth watching and most of them are classics. That back in the day films were just better. Or that you just love old cinema.
Nothing could be further from the truth. What this is is simple selection bias. Out of thousands of films churned out in Hollywood at the time, the ones of value were talked about and were targeted for preservation. As a result, many bad movies would be quickly forgotten and…
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