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Overrated and overhyped

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Hard-boiled LAPD detective Royal Dano, tracking a fugitive in San Francisco, rubs local reporters the wrong way with his failure to communicate, none more so than fiercely independent Barbara Stanwyck, whom he advises to go home and make dinner for her husband. She doesn't have one, of course, but she soon does after falling in lust with Dano's stolid but hunky sidekick Sterling Hayden.Marry in haste, repent at leisure. The dullest audience member can see this is a bad idea. After the life of a suburban LA housewife has driven her literally to tears, Stanwyck devotes her Lady Macbethian wiles to advancing her hubby's career ahead of that of his superior officer. These machinations involve police commissioner Raymond Burr and his wife Fay Wray. Yes, Kong's crush is now married to Perry Mason.Needless to say, all does not end well here. The cast alone would make this film worth a look, but it has many other virtues, including a slick professionalism and enough twists and turns to keep things moving along without any filler or padding. Although feminism and women's liberation were not in the general public's consciousness until the 60s, one can see their roots in many 50s films. If there is a Film Studies course somewhere entitled Proto-feminism in Film Noir, and there probably is, this would be right up there as subject matter along with various other films featuring Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino et al. Not that it preaches about it, just something there as a springboard for Stanwyck's actions.

Barbara Stanwyck is a bored reporter and Sterline Hayden is a Los Angeles detective. They meet. They have dinner at a restaurant. The next day, deeply in love, they're legally married. Well, it happens in the movies.Stanwyck had an alluring persona in the 30s and 40s, a shady vulnerability. By 1957 she was past her prime and although she turns in one of her better performances there's no longer any mystery about her. The rigid rules of grooming have given her an unflattering hair style and that doesn't help.Hayden was tall and rough sounding. He never made it to the Mount Rushmore of Hollywood's he-men -- John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and the like -- but he was never much interested in acting anyway. He was a he-man in real life, disdainful of college-educated elites. The day I was discharged from the Coast Guard an ad by Hayden appeared in one of the San Francisco papers. He needed young people to "man and woman" his yacht on a cruise to Europe, no experience necessary. "Come aboard and have a Baltic ball." (I'm not making that up.) I was young and experienced and tempted to apply. Seven years after this film, he demonstrated that he could act after all as General Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove." Anyway -- yes, the film. So the happy couple are married and living in Los Angeles. They live in a box-like house in a residential neighborhood made of box-like houses, each surrounded by a neatly trimmed hedge. Well, maybe not so happy after all. Stanwyck finds that at gatherings of the LAPD families, then men sit and play cards in one room while their wives cheerfully gossip in another. And Stanwyck, a working reporter, finds no place for herself. It's as if she's landed in a community full of pod people. It's this kind of stifling conformity that led to the Beatniks around the same time.Stanwyck's sometimes coarse, hysterical discontent is the focus of the first half of the movie, and it's pretty dull. It's a domestic drama. The fact that Hayden is a detective and that Stanwyck's machinations get him promoted isn't really relevant. Hayden may as well be working at Amalgamated Nuts and Bolts.There's also a discontinuity in the plot. Stanwyck is suddenly obsessed with her husband's advancement in the department whereas, earlier, the only thing she longed to do was to get him the hell out of the LAPD. Even as an Inspector, Hayden will still be one of the flock, surrounded by the same chattering nincompoops.She winds up doing everything she can to have Hayden promoted to Inspector, "the boss," including selling her body and committing murder. It doesn't work.

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

In San Francisco, lovelorn newspaper columnist Barbara Stanwyck (as Kathy Ferguson) helps visiting Los Angeles lieutenant Sterling Hayden (as William "Bill" Doyle) and fellow detective Royal Dano (as Charles "Charlie" Alidos) capture a woman who has murdered her husband. Never married, Ms. Stanwyck changes her outlook when Mr. Hayden invites her out for dinner and drinks. Offered a better job in New York, Stanwyck gives up her career when Hayden asks her to dinner in Los Angeles. They get married and move to the Valley. "I just want to be a good wife and do things for you," Stanwyck tells Hayden, "I just hope all your socks have holes in them, and I can sit for hours and hours darning them!" Smoking intermittently, Stanwyck pours coffee for Hayden and his poker pals while chatting with the girls about chiffon. She becomes interested in furthering her husband's career, insisting he move to the more upscale Beverly Hills police beat. Needing a release, Stanwyck gets it in the form of police inspector Raymond Burr (as Anthony "Tony" Pope) after a fender-bender with wife Fay Wray (as Alice Pope). Watching Stanwyck as an increasingly hysterical suburban housewife is unbelievably amusing.***** Crime of Passion (1/9/57) Gerd Oswald ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr, Fay Wray