Cry Wolf (motion picture: 1947). Henry Blanke, producer; directed by Peter Godfrey; screenplay by Catherine Turney. United States, Warner Bros. Pictures Inc., 1947. Warner Home Video, 2010. From the novel by Marjorie Carleton. Art director, Carl Jules Weyl; music, Franz Waxman; musical director, Leo F. Forbstein; cameraman, Carl Guthrie; editor, Folmer Blangsted.
Performers: Barbara Stanwyck (Sandra Marshall); Errol Flynn (Mark Caldwell); Geraldine Brooks (Julie Demarest); Richard Basehart (James Demarest); Jerome Cowan (Senator Caldwell); John Ridgely (Jackson Laidell); Patricia White (Angela); Rory Mallinson (Becket); Helene Thimig (Marta); Paul Stanton (Davenport); Barry Bernard (Roberts).
Summary: Recently widowed Sandra Demarest arrives at the isolated home of her late husband for his wake, but his uncle Mark Caldwell will not allow her to view the corpse. In a grudging gesture of hospitality Mark allows Sandra to stay at the house, but Sandra and Mark are suspicious of each other. Adding to the mix is Mark’s neurotic niece, who also resides in the house and takes a liking to Sandra. Mysterious happenings and dramatic events gradually ensue.
[editor's note: minor SPOILERS in the comments below].
An under-the radar diamond in the rough, Cry Wolf is the only film Barbara Stanwyck and Errol Flynn appeared in together. Flynn and La Stanwyck head a strong cast that includes Helen Thimig, Richard Basehart, Jerome Cowan, a very young Patricia Barry, and, in her first film, Geraldine Brooks. I’d never heard of director Peter Godfrey but he had the noirish touch and keeps the story moving apace. Godfrey is ably assisted by composer Franz Waxman and especially cameraman Carl Guthrie, whose atmospheric cinematography bathes things in a sinister overlay. Borrowing huge swaths of Jane Eyre, Rebecca and even Gaslight, Cry Wolf is pretty much composed of equal parts drawing room melodrama, quasi-noir and old dark house thriller. Flynn is cast against type as the brooding head of a well-to-do New England family and he underplays the role nicely, projecting a combination of Eyre’s Rochester and Rebecca’s Maxim de Winter.
But this is Stanwyck’s movie all the way. She radiates courage, vulnerably, and just plain, eminently Stanwyckian, bad ass grit and determination, and along the way she manages several athletic and equestrian scenes with equal aplomb. There’s not much romantic spark between her and Flynn [1], and their anti-chemistry actually suits the characters and story rather well. By contrast she shows much more chemistry with ingenue Geraldine Brooks [2].
Cry Wolf received mixed reviews from critics and was not a big hit at the box office despite its unmistakable star power. One explanation: times, and tastes, were changing, and the Gothic thriller was becoming passé. Another factor was that audiences simply couldn’t accept Errol Flynn as the villain, which he (more or less) is here. Still, the film has aged well. Maybe not a perfect production, and only marginally noir, Cry Wolf nonetheless is expert storytelling served up in old school Golden Age style showcasing two screen legends performing at the peak of their powers. Recommended.
[1] Information is scarce as to how well Flynn and Stanwyck got along on the set, but I understand there was some friction. An interesting aside: it's been a few years since I've read Flynn's autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, but I don't recall that he ever mentioned either Stanwyck or Cry Wolf. We shouldn't make too much of Stanwyck's absence, however; there were plenty of films he did and persons he worked with that Flynn didn't include specifically in Wicked Ways. 
[2] Am I way off mark or is there a hovering Sapphic undercurrent present in the scenes that Stanwyck and Brooks appear in together? Admittedly I may be guilty of conflating character and actor: i.e. relying too much on gossip I’ve read about Stanwyck’s inclinations, which, to be fair, have never been proved, but on the other hand, have never been disproved either.* Interesting this interpretation, because in the context of the story it’s the Brooks character who seems to have a crush on Stanwyck and not the other way around. Aside: their simpatico relationship onscreen in Cry Wolf is somewhat surprising in view of Brooks' later comments that Stanwyck treated her coldly on the set.
In any event, the two women’s connection is further underscored by a theme Waxman inserts practically every time they are together. The melodic contour is suspiciously similar to a passage from the ‘Liebesnacht’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Was this pure coincidence or perhaps an unconscious tell on the composer’s part? Alas, we’ll never know. By the way, the instrumental colorings and harmonic shadings Waxman employs throughout Cry Wolf have overtones, if you’ll pardon the term, of his score for Rebecca, not altogether inapropos given the two films’ distinctly similar vibe.
As for the Mark character, I’ve read comments that suggest he’s coded gay. True, he’s unmarried, and there’s no mention of a former wife or current girlfriend. But this take is somewhat undercut by his attempted seduction of Barbara. Somewhat caddishly, he explains to her that his kiss was purely ‘scientific’ in nature, and it all earns him a well deserved slap. Sleazy character that he may be, as the film progresses Barbara seems to be falling for Mark, and when Richard Basehart accuses her of being in love with him, she doesn’t deny it. Mark’s feelings for Barbara are more ambiguous; aside from the kiss, he shows no romantic tendencies in her direction. The murky, truncated ending holds out the promise of a romantic future for the two, but it’s hardly a sure thing. Watching the film it never occurred to me that the Flynn character might be gay: Flynn’s screen persona was so swashbucklingly straight, to say nothing of his roguish private life, that the idea never seemed a possibility.
* An ironic footnote to cinematic history and the Stanwyck oeuvre is that she was one of the first actresses to portray a, albeit somewhat toned down, lesbian character in a mainstream Hollywood film. In Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she plays a brothel madam who has an ‘unnatural’ attachment to her star employee, the enigmatic Capucine.
No comments:
Post a Comment