Film Review
To anyone familiar with Douglas Sirk's opulent Technicolor melodramas
of the 1950s,
Shockproof will
come as something of a surprise, one of the director's few excursions
into film noir territory. Although clearly one of Sirk's lesser
works,
Shockproof bears its
director's imprint, both in its meticulous direction and also in some
of its underlying themes. One of the essential Sirkian
ideas the film explores is the ironic notion that marriage is a bond
that has as much to do with guilt as with love; another is the penalty
that must be incurred by those who dare to break with societal
conventions.
Stylistically,
Shockproof resembles
most other American films noirs of the late 1940s, but it is not so
much a hardboiled thriller as a softboiled melodrama. The
original concept that Sirk was given when he agreed to direct the film
was quite different from what actually ended up on the
screen. Written by Samuel Fuller shortly after his return
to America after serving in WWII, the original story was much darker, a
more conventional film noir which would end in a violent shoot out
between the hero, Marat, and the police. It was not long
before the executives at Columbia were struck down with cold feet and
drafted in Helen Deutsch to do a rewrite that would make the film more
palatable to the average cinemagoer. Sirk resented this
intervention and the control that Deutsch ultimately had over the film,
leading him to leave the United States once he had made the film and
head back home to Germany. (He would soon return to
Hollywood when he had seen what had become of his country.)
Patricia Knight, a relatively inexperienced actress (and virtually
unknown today), was cast as the film's femme fatale at the insistence
of the lead actor Cornel Wilde, her husband. Knight
appeared in just five films and this is unquestionably her finest
hour. She brings an earthy quality that makes her character
morally ambiguous, unpredictable and believable, which helps to restore
some of the edge to the sanitised screenplay. Wilde also turns in
a fine performance and it is hard not to sympathise with his
character's descent into Hell as he is impelled to give up everything,
even his principles, in the name of love. The use of real
locations (necessitated by a low budget) adds to the film's stark
realism and helps distract us from the many plot contrivances. It
is a shame that the film has to end with the conventional happy ending
- one that is
truly
cringeworthy.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Douglas Sirk film:
Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)
Film Synopsis
Having served a five year stretch in prison for her part in a murder,
Jenny Marsh is released into the custody of parole officer Griff Marat,
who offers her the prospect of a new life with his support. One
of the conditions of Jenny's parole is that she no longer sees her
former boyfriend, Harry Wesson, a gambler and crook for whom she was
willing to go to jail. Still in love with Wesson, Jenny feels
bound to continue seeing him, in spite of Marat's warnings that she
risks going straight back to prison. Jenny soon finds
herself torn between her former lover and Marat, who shows her nothing
but kindness and respect. When Wesson threatens to tell Marat of
her promise to escape with him, Jenny shoots him in a moment of
madness. Unable to turn Jenny over to the police, Marat decides
to help her escape across the state border. In doing so, he knows
that he himself has become an outlaw. But it is too late to turn
back...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.