Allotment Wives (1945)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Boring

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This has to be one of the few Monogram releases I've reviewed and that's only because Kay Francis rounded out her career on Poverty Row. Francis is an actress I've heard described in glowing, nay, reverential terms all my life but seldom, if ever, seen on screen. I came close when I saw - and loved - the remake, with George Brent and Merle Oberon, of the Kay Francis/William Powell bittersweet One-Way Passage. From what I've read she was, during the thirties, Warners top actress but then they cut her loose and she struck a deal to produce and star in three movies at Monogram after which she rode into the sunset. Allotment Wives is the only one of the three I've seen and she is, apparently, cast against type as a heavy, the honcho of a ring of scammers who use a USO type club to set servicemen up with women prepared to marry them and then claim their allotment. Paul Kelly is tapped to break up the racket and it all ends in tears with Francis getting one of the all-time great last lines on celluloid; 'nice shooting' she says to the guy who has just placed a slug where it will do the most good. Class to the end.

Tough, Hard-Boiled "Social" Crime Drama from Low-Rent Monogram Pictures. This is one of Their Betters. Starring on the Skids, but not quite on Skid-Row, Kay Francis and the Always Reliable Paul Kelly with some, had been a Star, but not quite a Has-Been Support, from Otto Kruger as what else, a Snakey, but in the End more than just a Bad Guy.It has its Moments of Violence, Melodrama, and Social Commentary and is a Rather Engaging piece of Noirish Business. That of Unscrupulous Women Marrying Military Types by the Handful for not Love but Money. The Head of this 'Syndicate" is a Woman Herself (Miss Francis) who has a Daughter that Figures in quite Heavily in this Heavy Handedness.There are some Memorable Scenes in Bedrooms, Staircases, and Prison Cells that would seem to Fit Easily into Film-Noir, but its Flat and Less than Creative Style, mostly Overlit and Pedestrian, that keeps this one Barely Eligible, but does manage in the End to have Enough of what it Takes to be a Contender.

Allotment Wives (1945)You might moan when you hear the official voice-over talking about the War Department's benefits program and such. But hang in there. The intro is brief, and it's kind interesting, and it sets up the main movie, which has a great hook: women marrying several absentee G.I. men at once so they can collect multiple benefits. Including big death benefits if the men never returned..This isn't a brilliant affair, but it's better than you'd expect. It has some mediocre acting and routine filming, but it also some some really good parts. The key is the story, and the way the investigator (one main man, a curious, underplayed part by an underused, quirky actor, Paul Kelly) does his job.The leading female is played by Kay Francis. Never heard of her? She was Warner Bros. number one actress for several years in the early 1930s. Yes, and yet has really no single film to point to that has held up as great (she did do an interesting George Cukor movie early in both of their careers). But she's terrific with this middling material, and feels like an undiscovered leading lady. There's a scene between her and her saucy daughter that ends in a slap that will remind you of a similar scene in "Mildred Pierce" a year later. But Francis is usually just likable, even as she runs a lucrative scheme right in front of the U.S. Gov't's nose.There are straight, great noir films with lesser plots, to tell the truth, but this one is filmed in a bright, flat way, with the camera often just sitting there as the actors go through their lines in the lights. Not that you need shadowy drama all the time, but drama, and a physical presence, and a higher sense of style and art. Director William Nigh has a whole slew of these B-movies to his name, and he is often too functional for his own good.

I love movies made in the 1940's esp. Noir type movies. This particular movie, Allotment Wives, was being shown years ago at an extremely limited engagement at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco, California. I had to miss going to see the show, and I've regretted it ever since. I'd love to see this film. I love movies like The Best Years of Our Lives, So Proudly We Hail, Stage Door Canteen, The Red House, Detour, Mildred Pierce, Air Force, Citizen Kane, White Heat, High Sierra, Dark Passage, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, etc. I hate to think I would go to my grave without seeing Allotment Wives. Do they show it on late night TV? How can I see this? If you have any ideas, I would be grateful to you, fellow Noir aficionados.