The Strange Woman (1946)

Please don't spend money on this.

Great Film overall

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.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Hedy Lamarr stars as the town beauty from the wrong side of the tracks in this classic noir from the, some would say, under rated and very talented director Edgar G. Ulmer. She plays Jenny Hagar whose alcoholic father left her to her own devices except when it suited his temper. She is the equivalent to 'the raven haired temptress from below stairs' in period dramas, but instead lives in a shack but knows she wants riches, and will do anything to get them and that she can get men to do anything for her.It is a classic tale as she scurrilously lures the richest man in town, he is loaded, but she also has a thing for his young and sensitive son. You just know that wedding bells are in the air but so is mal-intent, and the ride is going to be very bumpy for all concerned.Now this is just classic Hollywood, it has the good, the bad and the sorely tempted and some sterling performances; Lamarr is just brilliant and at times I even fell for her duplicity – she is just that good. There is also a small but perfectly formed early role for the brilliant George Sanders, one of the best character actors ever. The direction and the subtleties are a joy to watch and the allure of the film is like Hedy Lammarr herself, in that the years have not diminished it one iota.

The title comes from the bible (see the incredible scene of the preacher) and is no misnomer since the heroine is some kind of female Tartuffe :she is a great pretender ,she gives money to extend the church,she cares for the others ,she seems to do everything out of the goodness of her heart.A hypocrite femme fatale.But we know she is evil from the start:when she was a nasty little girl who grew into a go-getter ,in search of a rich man.In its second part,the movie becomes a Phaedra situation: the heroine is married to his former whipping boy's dad and thus has become his stepmother .This story lacks focus ,coherence,and the riot scenes in Bangor town come at the most awkward moment.Even for a melodrama,sometimes,enough is enough.Stahl's "leave her to Heaven" or Vidor's "beyond the forest" ,which dealt with similar subjects had stronger screenplays.Hedy Lamarr is eye candy:she resembles Vivien Leigh but she is not as talented as her as an actress.

It's the old story...woman with her lascivious, tempting ways turns man into a beast or a weakling, and all because of the lust she's held responsible for arousing in his...ah...heart. "I always lose happiness...I can't seem to hold it," says Jenny Hager (Hedy Lamar), daughter of the town drunk. Jenny is poor and beautiful beyond most schoolboys' dreams. She is determined to use that beauty to marry a rich man. It's the 1840's in Bangor, Maine, and the older man she sets her sights on is the leading merchant in town. Isaiah Poster's eyes on her tell us what he wants, and one day she allows herself to be whipped by her drunken father so that she can run to Isaiah and plead protection. It's not long before she has married this middle-aged, fat tycoon, the richest man in Bangor. And before long, when she meets Ephraim Poster (Louis Hayward), Isaiah's son who is her age, you can see Jenny knows that money with youth will be more fun than money with age. Then she meets John Evered (George Sanders), who works for her husband as a woods boss, in charge of the lumbermen who log the timber old Ephraim owns. That John is engaged to her best friend doesn't stop Jenny's evaluation of things: Riches plus youth plus vigor is better than riches plus youth. As Jenny says, "Men like me...and it's men that have the money in this world!" Well, folks, be prepared to see one man die in a river torrent, another man die at the end of a rope and a look of disgust cross a third man's face. If you think this movie has a happy ending, you haven't been reading your Bible lately. The Strange Woman is a strange hybrid of Eugene O'Neill and parts of Forever Amber. The hypocrisy that oozes like spoiled milk from this movie makes only one point: A woman who uses her sexuality and her smarts must be up to no good, even if the men in her life are drunks, boors, weaklings and prigs. She must pay the price for being hot stuff. Jenny is a complicated woman, made up of equal parts compassion, resentment, ambition and sex...and she's a woman who loves a challenge. She finds ways to help the poor. She steps forward to enlarge the church to keep the grog shops small, to pay the doctor's bills of the sick, to send teachers up to the families where the loggers work. Her crime seems to be that of having a calculating willingness to use her sexual allure to better herself and get her way. "It wasn't by knowing how to set a table that Cleopatra got along" she says at one point. Edgar Ulmer, a B-movie director who for once in his life was given a proper budget with name actors, turns in a product which moves right along. There are some nice scenes, including a sexual setup in a lightning storm that is dramatic as all get out. Some think that the look of the movie and the inevitable retribution qualifies it as a noir. Maybe. But the movie itself is all melodrama, with an obvious script and a corny music score that undercuts whatever dramatic interest there might have once been. Hedy Lamar does an impressive job portraying Jenny. Lamar was a beautiful and smart woman, a better actress than most gave her credit for, and now, unfortunately, is remembered mainly as a Mel Brooks joke in Blazing Saddles. George Sanders doesn't bring much to the party as John Evered. He's not very believable in rough clothes as the woods boss, and later he comes off as an uncomfortable person to have as a soul mate. Louis Hayward is the real mystery. Hayward was a competent, versatile actor, believable in drama, light comedy and period adventures. He chose, or his contract chose for him, to play a weakling for whom we mainly feel pity tinged with contempt. However, he and Lamar, and Gene Lockhart as Isaiah, carry the acting load. Perhaps that's what Hayward saw in the part. The Strange Lady, in my view, is not a movie to make fun of even if it's overwrought. The lesson lies in what Hollywood sees as proper justice for a woman who is just as willing to use and enjoy her sexuality a man does. Well, okay, that's a little film-historian sounding. But the movie still smells of self-satisfied hypocrisy.

1840s Bangor, Maine is the setting for THE STRANGE WOMAN, by the author Ben Ames Williams, who also set his modern story of a jealous woman in the same sort of Maine setting for "Leave Her To Heaven".This one does not have the production values of the Fox film, is directed by a less distinguished director, Edgar G.Ulmer, but gives HEDY LAMARR a stronger role than usual while at the same time permitting her to be her beautiful self. As Jenny, she's really the stock heroine of the sort of novels Williams wrote, centering around jealous women who destroy the men in their lives by their shallow nature.Hedy first marries a wealthy man (GENE LOCKHART) for his money, then latches onto his weak son (LOUIS HAYWARD) whom she convinces to kill her husband during a boating accident, then sets her cap for a man she puts in charge of her husband's business (GEORGE SANDERS), never minding that he's already got a sweetheart (HILLARY BROOKE), and eventually coming between them in a less than subtle way.In fact, all of Hedy's machinations are less than subtle, accompanied by some dramatic background music by Carmen Dragon, and enhanced by close-ups of the star flaring her nostrils and posing provocatively in shadow or light, never once looking less than rapturously beautiful. Despite all her physical charms, it's clear that her acting, while acceptable, at the same time has severe limitations. Her face remains a beautiful mask whether she's suffering nobly or expressing radiant delight that her multiple schemes are working.LOUIS HAYWARD is a bit too old for the role of a man returning from college to live with his father and his step-mother, but acquits himself well in the role nevertheless. GEORGE SANDERS has a rather nondescript role for an actor of his brittle charm, obviously so enamored of Jenny that he overlooks all the puzzling elements that go into making her "a strange woman".DENNIS HOEY is excellent as Jenny's drunken father in the early scenes and ALAN NAPIER is effective in a brief supporting role. Production values are less than luxurious despite the detailed sets and the B&W photography suffers from the under-lit lighting, not helped by the fact that the print itself being shown on TCM is not high quality and sometimes gives the film a harsh look rather than Gothic grandeur.For Lamarr's fans, it's one of her better vehicles at a time when she was free-lancing away from MGM. At least the story gives her more of a chance to show some dramatic talent that was largely obscured in most of her MGM outings, although her range is clearly limited.