Black Widow (1954)

Very disappointed :(

Very best movie i ever watch

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

BLACK WIDOW is an all-star Hollywood film noir shot in vibrant colour and featuring a starring role for ageing starlet Ginger Rogers. The story is about a pretty young woman who falls for a big-shot theatre producer, causing the finger of suspicion to fall on him when she's found murdered. The cast are decent here and Van Heflin does fine with his 'wronged man' material, but the main problem is with the sluggish pace. There are too many peripheral characters and sub-plots that merely murky the waters, and for a murder mystery there's absolutely no suspense. Still, at least it looks good.

Copyright 1954 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 27 October 1954. U.S. release: November 1954. U.K. release: March 1955. Australian release: 28 May 1955. Sydney opening at the Regent. 8,520 feet. 95 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Murder mystery in which a Broadway producer is suspected of strangling a girl he had befriended. A moderately ingenious but disagreeable story, tamely developed. — "Sight & Sound". NOTES: Fox's 18th CinemaScope feature and the first to return only a modest profit (on what was a very modest investment at that). CinemaScope was already losing its box-office lure.COMMENT: A murder mystery in CinemaScope certainly sounds novel and promising, but alas this movie gives the idea such an indifferent work-out it's impossible to reach any conclusion as to the Scope screen's effectiveness in dramatizing this sort of entertainment. The whodunit aspects are indifferently, even perfunctorily handled, and the characters are so one-dimensional that little if any suspense is generated. True, Ginger Rogers plays her vindictive actress with a certain amount of bite and sparkle, and Peggy Ann Garner is briefly effective as the "All About Eve" clone and victim, but the rest of the players come nowhere near these standards. George Raft just rattles off his lines, while Van Heflin as usual seems to go out of his way to be plain dull. Reginald Gardiner is handed some pungent lines, but he is so unbelievable that his observations count for little. In fact, all the pretentious allusions in the dialogue generally fall flat. Production values are minor, CinemaScope being poorly utilized, while a most incompatible and obvious stand-in pretends to be Van Heflin in the New York location shots.

This glossy murder mystery features a group of sophisticated characters who live in luxurious apartments in Manhattan and are associated in various ways with the Broadway theatre business. Their affluence is emphasised visually by the movie being filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor and using some stunning cinematography to highlight the attractiveness of their upmarket surroundings. Its plot about an innocent man, whose ill-judged actions lead to him becoming the prime suspect in a murder case, also contains enough twists and surprises to ensure that the action never loses pace and remains engaging right through to its conclusion.At his wife's insistence, successful Broadway producer Peter Denver (Van Heflin) attends a cocktail party being held by his upstairs neighbour Carlotta "Lottie" Marin (Ginger Rogers) who happens to be the star of his latest Broadway show. As he doesn't really like these types of parties (or his hostess) very much and his wife is out of town visiting her ailing mother, he aims to spend as little time as possible fulfilling his social obligation. In a quiet spot at the party, however, he meets a rather lost-looking young lady called Nancy "Nanny" Ordway (Peggy Ann Garner) who tells him she's a writer who hasn't, so far, had any of her work published. At Peter's suggestion, they leave early and have a meal together before going their separate ways.When Peter telephones Iris later that night, he gives her a full account of what had transpired and Iris predicts that he'll be hearing from Nanny again and that she'll ask him to use his influence, in some way, to help her to advance her career. Peter thinks this is unlikely because Nanny appears to be so sweet and naïve but he knows nothing of how ruthless and ambitious she actually is.Shortly after their first meeting (and at her request), Nanny again has dinner with Peter and skilfully gets him to offer her the use of his apartment to do her writing in when he's out at work. This arrangement is due to end when his wife returns home but when Peter and Iris arrive at their front door after he'd met her at the airport, the music that they hear coming from inside leads them to believe that Nanny must still be there. When they enter, however, it initially seems that there's no-one present, but shortly after, when Iris goes into the bathroom, she discovers Nanny's dead body hanging from a rope and a note found close-by makes it appear that Nanny had, in fact, taken her own life.A little while later, when it becomes clear that Nanny was murdered and was pregnant, other circumstantial evidence also points to Peter being culpable and so he quickly decides to carry out his own investigation to track down the real killer.Stangely, for a movie that wasn't adapted from a stage play, "Black Widow" looks very stagy because a high proportion of the action takes place in two identical apartments and the style of acting is frequently rather mannered. Van Heflin is an exception to this as he seems completely natural and believable as a mild-mannered, nice guy who, because of his gullibility, sleepwalks into a nightmare. Ginger Rogers, on the other hand, overacts outrageously as Lottie, a domineering gossip who ultimately reveals some vulnerabilities that aren't evident throughout most of the action. The cast also benefits from producer/director Nunnally Johnson's high-quality dialogue which helps to compensate a little for the movie's lack of realism and the rather unnatural way in which some of the developments unfold.

"Black Widow" is well worth seeing simply because it stars Van Heflin. While Heflin is not at all famous today, I love seeing him in films because he was a great 'everyman' character--not beautiful by Hollywood standards, but a terrific actor nonetheless. It also didn't hurt that he had the likes of Gene Tierney and Ginger Rogers in support, nor did it hurt that the film was genuinely entertaining. My only reservation is that the plot is VERY difficult to believe.The film begins with Helfin's wife (Tierney) going on a trip and Heflin reluctantly going to a party held by an annoying celebrity (Rogers). There at the party, Heflin meets a shy aspiring writer--and he feels obliged to take her under his wing and help her in her career. What he doesn't realize is that this cute, naive woman is anything but---she's a calculating and completely amoral woman (hence the title of the film). Now I sure thought it was going to look like a variation on "All About Eve"--and it sure looked that way for a while. But the film also takes some amazing twists--and kept me in suspense throughout when the film became a murder mystery! The biggest strength of the film is Helfin's gritty and likable performance. But the film also had a highly entertaining plot--provided you don't wind that it's VERY fanciful and hard to believe if you really think about it. Still, I was able to suspend disbelief and enjoyed it--as will most lovers of classic Hollywood films.