A calculating divorcée risks her chances at wealth and security with a man she doesn't love by getting involved with a hotheaded murderer.
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John Chard
9
By John Chard
Turnip Man and Iceberg Woman.
Lady of Deceit (AKA: Born to Kill) is directed by Robert Wise and adapted to screenplay by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay from the novel Deadlier than the Male written by James Gunn. It stars Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Walter Slezak, Elisha Cook Jr., Audrey Long, Isabel Jewell and Esther Howard. Music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by Robert De Grasse.
Trevor plays conniving divorcée Helen Brent, who risks her chances at the wealth and security she craves with the man she doesn't love by falling for hotheaded murderer Sam Wild (Tierney), who, with his own agenda, is soon to marry her foster sister.
I wouldn't trade places with you if they sliced me into little pieces.
Hard-bitten noir of some substance that pits two of noir's most unlikable characters against each other. Tierney's psychotic machismo and Trevor's calculating sex-bomb go head to head in a deliriously distorted romance that will only go one way once their inner pursuit of glory comes to the fore.
And he who falls beneath her spell has need of God's mercy.
The plot is a bit hard to take, but when in noirville it sometimes helps to stop off for a bite to eat at the fantastique café. It's a grim tale of pathological persons and it's superbly directed by Wise in what was his first foray into straight edged film noir. Slezak adds some seedy quality as a bible quoting P.I., Cook Junior does what he does best and Jewell inputs the naive sexy glamour.
Voluptuous violence and mad love in the shadows. Hooray! 8/10
