Lack of good storyline.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is an advice columnist for the San Francisco Post. LAPD detective William Doyle (Sterling Hayden) and Captain Charlie Alidos arrive for a case. She helps Doyle to solve the case and is offered a big opportunity. Instead, she abandons her career to marry Doyle and follow him to LA. Doyle is a by-the-books guy with no ambitions to climb higher. Kathy claims to have no ambitions other than to be a housewife. Soon, she chafes at the banalities of a suburban housewife life and is pushing Doyle up the ladder any which way possible. She deliberately gets into a car accident with Alice Pope to connect with her husband, Police Inspector Tony Pope (Raymond Burr). This sets her in conflict with the Alidos and down a dark path.Barbara Stanwyck is a noir femme fatale stuck in suburbia. It is a fascinating concept and it has the amazing Stanwyck. She does need a more compelling opponent. It would have been interesting to have the Alidos have a bigger role. As such, it is a fascinating character for Stanwyck. She has the balls and the rooting interest. Although, I don't think that it's necessary to start her off as a career woman. It would have been more compelling to do a darker side of suburban life by starting everyone in that nuclear family utopia.

Kathy (Barbara Stanwyck) leaves the newspaper business to marry homicide detective Bill but is frustrated by his lack of ambition and the banality of life in the suburbs. Her drive to advance Bill's career soon takes her down a dangerous path.Barbara Stanwyck, Raymond Burr, Fay Wray, Robert Quarry and others... this is quite the cast. That alone should make this worth watching. Stanwyck leads the way, and while this may not be her finest performance, it is always nice to see her in the lead.How this is not considered one of the better-known film noir movies out there is something of a mystery to me given those involved. It certainly is not seen on the level as "Asphalt Jungle" or the works of Fritz Lang. Maybe it should be?

Crime of Passion is directed by Gerd Oswald and written by Jo Eisinger. It stars Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr and Fay Wray. Music is by Paul Dunlap and cinematography by Joseph LaShelle.It's a strange one in many ways, in that it's a film of considerable intelligence and wry social critique. It even folds inwards the role of the film noir femme fatale, marking it out as fascinating. Yet it never fully delivers for dramatic purpose, leaving it as a modest entry in the last throes of the classic era film noir cycle.Plot sees Stanwyck as Kathy Ferguson, a strong and intelligent newspaper columnist who really doesn't suffer fools gladly. However, when she helps the police with a crime she meets and falls in love with Lt. Bill Doyle (Hayden), and after a whirlwind romance she marries him and finds herself in a picket fence suburban hell. Tiring of Bill standing still, happy with his place in society, Kathy takes drastic action to elevate their life to greater heights...Such is the quality of lead cast members doing what they did best, film manages to hold the attention from a narrative perspective, and with LaShelle's photography firmly dealing in the 50s noir realm of darkness in daylight, there's a claustrophobic atmosphere wrung out to accentuate Kathy's suburban Suzy Homemamker suffocation. The wry observations of social standings and the woman's role in the 50s home is given skilled direction by Oswald (A Kiss Before Dying), the feminist viewpoints standing tall at the front of the play.Unfortunately all the brains and technical attributes involved in production can't hide the fact that it's very rarely exciting or suspenseful, practically crawling to a sedate resolution that isn't exactly satisfying. There's a lot of good here, making it worth a watch for fans of the stars or for those that like some brains in their noir diet. But you may end up as frustrated as I was come the end... 6/10

A devoted columnist for a large San Francisco newspaper, Barbara Stanwyck has forgone marriage and romance to have a career. But when Los Angeles police detective Sterling Hayden comes to town on a case, sparks fly between the two of them, and they impulsively marry. Stanwyck relocates to Los Angeles and finds the mediocrity of her existence not to her liking at all, and that includes instant resentment towards the wives of Hayden's co-workers, lead by chatty Virginia Grey. Certainly, these "Ladies who Lunch" types would get on the nerves of an independent woman such as Stanwyck, and it becomes her life's mission to change their situation immediately.Stanwyck thinks like a ruthless businessman and schemes to get into the good graces of Hayden's boss's wife (Fay Wray), hoping that her husband (Raymond Burr) will look at Hayden for an important promotion. To get this to come to fruition, she goes as far as seducing him, but that's no guarantee that hubby will get the job Stanwyck wants for him. Stanwyck does what any other film noir wife will do. She resorts to murder! Not as ruthless as her 40's film noir vixens Phyllis Diedrickson, Martha Ivers, or Thelma Jordan, Stanwyck's character is certainly a strong woman, having worked mainly around men and seemingly preferring their company. Certainly, the women in her new social circle seem frivolous and flighty, and its obvious that Stanwyck would feel more comfortable playing cards with the boys rather than swapping recipes with the girls. So while the crime she commits seems to come out of nowhere (other than perhaps a mental breakdown gone untreated), it does make sense that the frustration she felt would take over and cause her to snap. Stanwyck, getting ready to move on to her television career (with only a few feature films left), is still a quite attractive, shapely woman, and for someone in her early 50's, she has quite a bit of sex appeal left. This won't go down in the list of best film noir thrillers, but Stanwyck's performance helps it rise above what was being done in abundance already on television.