A Woman's Secret (1949)

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Maureen O'Hara herself pretty well summed up a proper review for this film: "I made no attempt to keep it a secret that I thought the story stank." Well, saying it "stank" might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.Usually we think about the affect that an actor has on a film. But here, it almost seems the opposite. This script was terrible for Maureen O'Hara. O'Hara was somewhat of a unique actress. She reminded me of fellow I knew who seemed to be able to comfortably wear almost any set of clothing. O'Hara could wear a comedy coat, a drama coat, even a fantasy coat. But this coat didn't fit O'Hara well at all.Melvyn Douglas comes off okay here because his flip attitude works here...and this was during the point in his career where Douglas was often flip.Gloria Grahame is a surprise here. I always thought it was a shame how see often played a sultry woman...the type of role that doesn't still come across very well. Well, here she doesn't play that role at all. What is weird is that a singer sings her songs while she lip syncs, and the singer they chose wasn't very good at all.Bill Williams is silly acting here. Dismissed! Victor Jory's role doesn't really work at all; it is too far out of his comfort zone.Mary Phillips and Jay C. Flippen are quite entertaining as a detective and his wife...an amateur sleuth herself...though I'm not sure that makes much sense.No, this film just doesn't work.

After two duds, Nicholas Ray's third directorial attempt finally broke through the mold to create an intriguing story complete with a fine mixture of hard-boiled and humorous dialogue as well as solid acting from everyone down to the minute supporting roles.Maureen O'Hara and Gloria Grahame headline a two women with a strange connection pushed even closer together when one of them is shot and the other is accused. Melvyn Douglas, in his trademark wry style of speaking, attempts to investigate, hoping to clear O'Hara's name. What follows is a string of flashbacks interspersed with the police, Grahame's lover and even the police inspector's wife getting into the mix. Rays films all of this with some interesting camera angles as well as some lighting tricks which certainly would influence his later work. The social messages are done away with and what is left is a witty, clever script by the (in)famous Herman J. Mankiewicz which keeps us hanging in the balance up to the very end.

I'm not going to bother with the silly story behind this farce. There are several other reviews with that info. The film is full of great actors and Maureen O'Hara is stunningly beautiful. Although there's enough talent to keep you entertained up to the end, my main concern is what this film is not.It is not a whodunit, although Jay C. Flippen as police inspector Jim Fowler at one point says it is. It is not Film Noir, although one flashback scene looks very noirish. Finally, it is certainly not an "All About Eve" as the film is actually all about nobody. In fact, it was impossible for me to figure out why most of the characters do what they do -- but, maybe you can.Why does the police inspector sit and listen to Melvyn Douglas drone on for hours about what a great gal the Maureen O'Hara character is? Why does Maureen O'Hara insist that she is guilty? Why does Gloria Grahame have a German Luger in her purse? Why does the police inspector's wife suddenly turn into a detective? Why is Bill Williams even in the movie? There are many more inexplicable questions that I felt were never answered, but I guess it's just A Woman's Secret.

Though not really a noir, this emerged a surprisingly compelling melodrama. That said, prior to its late-night Italian screening, the notoriously eccentric commentator Enrico Ghezzi stated that the film – Ray's second – was forced on him by Dore Schary; it is evident because, if there's an auteur at work here, it's screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Ray's treatment, however, is sufficiently stylish to overcome the essential impersonality with which he approached the material and, at least, through working on this film, he met future wife Gloria Grahame!).Even if controversy still rages over Mankiewicz' exact contribution to CITIZEN KANE (1941), he gives this one a similar flashback structure; of course, comparisons to Orson Welles' magnum opus won't do Ray's more modest effort any favors, so I won't make any! Still, while not especially memorable, the film can stand on its own two feet – thanks largely to a fine cast (an unusually aggressive Maureen O'Hara, the volatile Grahame, the typically cynical Melvyn Douglas, Victor Jory as a wealthy but love-struck middle-aged man, Jay C. Flippen as an understanding police inspector). By the way, amusing though it is, the film's injection of humor is rather atypical for Ray – particularly in the figure of Flippen's wife, who likes to carry out her own sleuthing!