A Woman's Secret (1949)
Directed by Nicholas Ray

Film Review

Nicholas Ray's first feature They Live by Night (1948) may have been rapturously received by some critics but it failed to recoup its cost at the box office.  With one misfire under his belt, Ray was in no position to turn down his next commission, a so-called woman's picture adapted from a novel by Vicki Baum, the author of the esteemed Grand Hotel (1932).  It was a project for which Ray had little enthusiasm and it shows, the result being a film that is torn between being typical circa 1940s melodrama and a classic film noir murder mystery.  Repeating the formula he had so skilfully adopted on Citizen Kane, screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz constructs the narrative as a complicated series of flashbacks, some of which turn out to play fast and loose with the truth (a narrative sleight of hand that Hitchcock tried and later regretted on his film Stage Fright).

A Woman's Secret not only suffers from a severe crisis of identity, it also struggles to fill its modest runtime and at times resembles a motor vehicle whose engine is on the point of packing up.  Flawed as it may be, the film is not without charm and manages to be quite an effective attempt to combine two of the most popular genres in American cinema of the 1940s.  The film was intended to help Gloria Grahame on her way to Hollywood stardom but failed to achieve this as its release was (inexplicably) delayed for a few years by RKO producer Howard Hughes.  With her lingering close-ups, Grahame is certainly favoured over her equally glamorous co-star Maureen O'Hara, Ray having well and truly fallen under her demonic spell.  An off-screen romance between the director and his star-in-the-making led the couple to embark on a turbulent and short-lived marriage which almost derailed both of their careers.  Grahame has rarely looked more beautiful and enchanting as she does here, with a sly exotic allure that effectively counterpoints O'Hara's more down-to-earth womanly charms. This time round, the critics were less kind to Ray and the film, once again, failed to turn a profit.  Too often overlooked, A Woman's Secret is a curiosity in the director's oeuvre - one that, with its brooding atmosphere and ambiguous, multi-faceted characters, presages the many great films that were to come.

Film Synopsis

After a radio recording, the famous singer Susan Caldwell, known to all as Estrellita, returns to her apartment to tell her manager Marion Washbourn that she intends to end her career.  A few minutes later, Susan is in critical state, having sustained a near-fatal gunshot wound.  As her friend is taken to hospital, Marion confesses to the police that she shot her in the course of a heated argument.  Her friend Luke Jordan cannot accept the confession and sets out to prove Marion's innocence.  He recalls how he first met Marion, a singer with a glittering future ahead of her before she lost her voice.  Her own career over, Marion took Susan under her wing and made her a star.  There is no reason why Marion should try to kill her protégée, but when Susan regains consciousness she is quick to confirm Maron's version of events...