That Joan's character does not have a scratch on her when she shows up at her
parents home at the beginning of the movie?
Remember, she has just taken a pretty rough beating and is running for her life.
But she arrives to go into hiding without a scratch or a bruise on her!
I think the Director made a mistake!!
"OOO...I'M GON' TELL MAMA!"
So she was a fast healer.
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I just saw this film again the other night and it is one of my FAVORITE CRAWFORD films. Her intensity is so strong I thought she would burn a hole through the film. She is on fire. What a great film that brings endless hours of pleasure and really does a great job at potraying a woman who has lost her moral compass. And Steve Cochran is one of Joan's most sexy leading men EVER. I love when she is able to bed the younger man.
shareYes I was pleasantly surprised by this Crawford flick. She really gives a great performance though there are some unintentionally funny lines "I appreciate your thoughtfulness but I don't care for orchids in the afternoon" being one. I agree that the cinematography, the pace and the Crawford star quality puts this film above a lot of gangster melodramas of the period.
shareI think maybe it was because of the production code of the time. They weren't allowed to show too much violence or blood and gore. Notice that in this movie, like most of the time, that bullets leave no holes in clothing, and things like that. I was actually a little surprised by this film--generally childrens' characters were not allowed to be harmed in movies. Of course, this film violated that rule, even though they didn't show it directly.
Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.
And did you notice that in Crawford's close-ups and mid-shots early in the film they were already using soft-focus on her? The contrast is obvious when other characters are in the shot, as the photography is much crisper.
"Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke."
Crawford was the female equivalent to Chuck Norris!
shareIf she was traveling all the way from Palm Springs to that dump of a town in Texas or Oklahoma where she started from, she surely would have had time to freshen her make up. I did notice what looked like dust on her convertible. I guess that was Warner Brothers "realism".
shareYeah, at least a little time had elapsed. The marks Castleman left on her face would've looked red if it had been in color. As I'm sure we've all experienced, red marks sometimes go away quickly. Realistically, sometimes there aren't even bruises where it seems like there should be some. That's happened to me occasionally.
Cheese fries...next time.
Actually, that backwater town was filmed right outside of Palm Springs from an interview with director Sherman.
The Divine Genealogy Goddess
I suspect this was probably intentional. They probably figured there was no point giving anything away and that people wouldn't remember it by the end anyway.
Maybe a better thing to do would have been to have her turn up in really bad condition and then journey towards seeing her end up that way? Oh well. Still a great film, and stellar performance.
Yea, they were covering for upcoming events. If I had seen this film back in the day, I would not have picked up on some of this. But, after repeated viewings, some things really stand out. Spoiler Alert! It took me several views before I tied in the start with the end. Even though it was Nick's own car that the killer used to dump his body, I never paid attention that it was Joan's current and former boyfriends driving the car, the killers.
shareDames were tougher then than they are now. And none tougher than Joan Crawford!
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He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45