Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Am I Missing Something?

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Compared to what we are presented with today in the cinema, A Woman's Secret and many films of that era are quaint antedeluvian oddities, and it would be easy to poke fun at them. But we should remember that there are a great many films of the time, for whatever reason, have stood the test of time and then some, that tastes change and what might now seem ludicrous was just what movie-goers wanted at the time, and finally that far more versatile technology has allowed our modern directors to put on screen which Nick Ray in 1949 could only have dreamed off. Having said all that, A Woman's Secret was pretty tacky even according to its contemporary standards.It is, at the end of the day, nothing more than a pretty mediocre potboiler. The story is daft, it can't make up its mind whether to be a noir or just a lighthearted drama, and the introduction of the police inspector's amateur sleuth wife is nothing short of bizarre. It didn't score for me at all.

I had high hopes for this film. The screenplay is by Herman J Mankiewicz of 'Citizen Kane' fame and it's directed by Nicholas Ray and features actress Gloria Grahame. Ray also directed one of my favorite films 'In A Lonely Place' in which Grahame also starred. The great side-story on the film here is how the two of them met on the set and zipped off to Vegas so that Grahame could get a quickie divorce from her then husband and marry Ray. Maybe they should have focused on making this a watchable film instead of cooing over each other. Like most noirs this had tons of flashbacks, but generally in other movies they are used to reveal surprising clues, here they are a gimmick to tell every irrelevant detail of somebody's life which we could care less about. Avoid this film and watch 'In a Lonely Place' instead.

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.

A WOMAN'S SECRET is a melodramatic noir style mystery based on a Vicki Baum story, played in florid fashion by MAUREEN O'HARA, MELVYN DOUGLAS and GLORIA GRAHAME, all of whom are a bit over-the-top under Nichols Ray's direction.O'Hara is the tough ex-singer promoter of the singing career of Grahame, and plays some of her argumentative moments as though she's Joan Crawford brandishing a gun in "Mildred Pierce". She gives the whole part a surface temperament of angry emotions that doesn't quite ring true, alternating with sweeter moments. She does get a chance to demonstrate her pleasant singing voice, unlike Grahame who is dubbed.After confessing to shooting Grahame during a heated argument over Gloria's decision to quit her career, she tells her story in flashback. Her good friend, MELVYN DOUGLAS, also fills in some of her background with another flashback, a la "Mildred Pierce" and "Laura" techniques.Douglas is a piano accompanist who refers to Grahame's singing voice as "a voice with hormones". He has some clever lines and plays the film's most believable character. BILL WILLIAMS shows up midway through the story as Grahame's friend (in a wasted role) who's anxious to see that O'Hara gets punishment for shooting Grahame. "I hope they hang her!" Unfortunately, it's also at the midway point that the story starts to lose interest, as the mystery is slow to clear up and the story rambles on with still another flashback full of exposition by Douglas about past events.A tighter script without all the flashbacks and a more direct way of telling the story might have made for improvements. As it is, it has a promising start but loses its way, stumbling in a strand of back stories long before any final explanation is given.