So: Eddie Muller just showed it on TCM again last weekend, on his Noir Alley show. So I pulled out my wonderful Flicker Alley DVD of the film and gave it yet another run. There've been many. This is a movie, like Touch of Evil, The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, The Big Sleep, one of those that I can put on and it feels like home. But the thing is, Woman on the Run isn't anywhere near as famous as any of those films.
There are alot of Noirs that I love that aren't up there with the really famous ones. Cry of the City or Kiss of Death come to mind. Favorites of mine. Woman on the Run is on that level for me. It's just so much more than meets the eye.
It's got everything. It's a great love story, about hope and renewal; at the beginning, this couple's marriage is basically over. There's nothing left but regret, bitterness, and misunderstanding. The husband is out late one night, walking his dog; he witnesses a murder, becomes an important witness to the cops, is in fear for his life, and takes off. The cops push the wife to find her husband before this killer does.
Simple. The wife is Ann Sheridan; and she's never been better. And that's saying something. She's older at this point in her career. She's been around the block, going from being the "oomph girl", and doing stellar work with Cagney, Bogart, Cary Grant, she'd been in some major pictures and was very good all the time. But she's done with being the babe, and now she's producing something on her own here, and she grasps for something more, something different.
Here; she's going out looking for husband, and she ends up finding more, LOTS more, than she imagined she could. It's a wonderful movie about finding what you were afraid has left, what you're afraid was lost, somehow it's found.
Of course, the movie is a damn good thriller. There's a killer out there, that wants to find the witness to what he's done. The killer and the cops are racing to find the husband. So's the wife. The movie is a tremendous example of location shooting; in this case it's San Francisco that gets the honors. It's a lovely shot film, and if you're familiar with SF i really think you'll dig seeing it in this old picture. And then the final sequences, with the Orson Welles' feel at an amusement park, that was shot at Ocean Park in Santa Monica. That final sequence is fantastic; creepy as hell, and the tension really builds, as everyone converges at the Santa Monica Pier and who will get to the husband first. After watching the film yet again, I watched Eddie Muller's TCM commentary, and he and Ernest Dickerson talked about the Wellesian ending. Boss. Definitely that Lady From Shanghai flavor. Nice.
Woman on the Run is just a little, well done noir/melodrama; the kind that I have a special affinity for. It has some great things to say about marriage, friendship, and hope. It's got a nifty little history to it; the film was basically lost for a very long time, until Muller saved it. It's got a cool backstory, with the great Sheridan deciding she was gonna play something other than some tart; and she thrilled at dressing down and looking the opposite of flashy, and did some stellar work. It's got some great work by actors like Dennis O'Keefe, who is really good in this, and Robert Keith, who was in a gazillion flicks in the 50's, and is commendable here.
Has anyone here ever happened to come across this one? It's worth a sit.
