Watch Black Widow For Free

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This overripe meller is a feast for the eyes especially for those who like their wardrobe to look like costumes but dramatically it's a limp sister. Part of the problem is that while it seems to have film noir leanings the Cinemascope while beautiful is all wrong for the tenor of the tale. The story is something that should have taken place in grimy dressing rooms and back alleys so the wide airy rooms and distant placement of the actors required by the process is a tension killer.Johnson's prosaic direction is no help just letting the story dawdle along unlike a director such a Edgar Ulmer or Nick Ray who would have sheared about ten minutes off and had a much more lively film.While the cast is a good one none turn in their best work in this. Van Heflin usually has a spiky, combative edge to his performances that make them engaging but which is missing here. Maybe this was a contract assignment that he didn't want to do or he couldn't get a handle on how to make something out of his chump of a character but whatever it is he's off his game.Gene Tierney, whose role for a star of her stature is remarkably small, was falling apart during the filming and though she looks good it's a miracle considering what rough shape she was in at the time she was able to even get to the studio each morning. Her part could have been cut completely without making a difference to the story.This was supposed to be Peggy Ann Garner's big chance to break into adult roles but everything that was special about her as a child actress disappeared as she matured and she seems a not terribly individual girl with a hideous dye job and hairdo as well as an off putting way of speaking. The transition was unsuccessful and she faded from the screen shortly after.Then there is Ginger Rogers. Her outfits are eye popping but she seems to have squeezed every ounce of her old charm and sass out of her persona and is left with a brittle, affected very shiny husk that looks like Ginger Rogers but acts like a mannequin. Her poodle perm is a horror as well!If you like star studded overdressed entertainments then this will be a satisfactory time filler but the similar much more effectively done film The Velvet Touch with Rosalind Russell, Claire Trevor and Sydney Greenstreet gets right everything this one gets wrong. That's the one worth seeking out.

Was this a play first? It feels like it. It's a virtually stage-bound film that is barely opened up. Almost all of it is set in 3 locations. Perhaps Hitchcock could have made this gripping - as he did in "Rear Window" and "Rope" - but that doesn't work here.In fact, Hitchcock might also have been interested in the "wrong man" aspect of this plot. But that is not developed here either. It's simply a drawing room murder mystery that is not really all that much of a murder mystery.The performances aren't horrible, but nothing is really memorable. Ginger Rogers has the meatiest part, but doesn't make it to the league of Bette Davis' Margot Channing....but then who could?The denouement - which, from the French means, "the untying of a knot" - is literally about a knot. But, again, one could see that coming a mile away. So, the movie ends with a thud.Speaking of that, I wish the movie had ended with a thud. If the actual murderer had gone leaping off the much-discussed balcony overlooking Central Park, it would have been much more memorable.

Black Widow (1954)An early full color Cinemascope drama, loaded with starts, and written by a high powered but somewhat forgotten stage and screen writer of the 40s and 50s, Nunnally Johnson. And this is one of a handful of films he directed, too. It's really quite a fully blossomed drama, and it grows with complexity as it goes. And it's packed with stars. The leading man has always impressed me even though he's not the handsome or powerful sort that usually commands the first credits, Van Heflin. he's really amazing, subtle and perfectly sophisticated and well meaning and (eventually) tortured.His wife is played with usual cool cheerfulness by Gene Tierney, and their neighbor and friend is a haughty and ridiculous (perfectly so) Ginger Rogers. Rogers takes her role to the hilt, both in arrogance and frivolity and later in emotional breakdown.What ensues is not just highbrow Broadway theater culture, but eventually a criminal (or psychologically suspenseful) tidal wave sweeps over the relatively lightweight beginnings, and the effect is kind of remarkable in its own way. I mean, it's so completely theatrical and melodramatic, and yet it really works as an interpersonal and heartfelt (and probing) drama, too. The writing is smart, nuanced, and it plays the line of being exactly what it is--meaning that it's about the very world that Johnson lives in.The cop in this case is George Raft, always a little stiff and stiff again here, but he does his job. The seductress who is the center of all these talents is Peggy Ann Garner. Who is she? Well, after several years of being a successful child actress, and except for a small role in an obscure 1951 Fred Zinnemann film as an adult, Garner was a television actress (including some t.v. movies) bouncing from one series to another. Then, at the end of her career, she had small roles in three more features. And in many ways, she's the weak link here--she's supposed to be sleeping her way to success in the theater world, and yet there's something not quite right about her in this role. I suppose I underestimate middle aged rich men.The plot this girl weaves for those around her is elaborate and devilish. And when it goes wrong for her, it really goes wrong for our main man Heflin. At the point the film is very much like Hitchcock film, with the apparently innocent man accused of a crime. Unlike Hitchcock, Johnson uses flashbacks at key points near the end., which do their job but also have a way of deflating the suspense.See for yourself!

Advertised as the first mystery film to be shot in CinemaScope, 1954's "Black Widow" turns out to be a minor Technicolor film noir that yet contains numerous satisfying elements. Produced, written and directed by Nunnally Johnson, the picture also showcases the talents of a quartet of Hollywood's biggest names: Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, Ginger Rogers and George Raft. (Johnson had previously written the script for Tierney's third picture, 1941's "Tobacco Road.") In the film, Broadway producer Peter Denver (Heflin) goes to a party at the home of stage actress Lottie Marin (Rogers) and meets a pretty, 20-year-old aspiring writer from Savannah, Nancy Ordway (Peggy Ann Garner, 23 here and grown up quite nicely since "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn"). He allows her to use his luxury apartment to write in while he is at work and his wife Iris (Tierney) is visiting her sick mother, but when Nancy is found hanged in the bathroom, an apparent suicide, that's when Detective Bruce (Raft) comes a-calling. And when it is discovered that Nanny (as she is popularly known; "Nanny Ordway" sounds more like a new Disney flick, though, no?) had actually been murdered, Peter's claim of innocence falls on increasingly deaf ears....I must say, for an A-list murder mystery given the maximum production treatment by 20th Century Fox, this one is exceedingly easy to figure out. Even I was able to nail the culprit halfway through (although there ARE numerous twists and turns before we get to the ultimate revelation), and I usually stink at this kind of guessing game. But really, one glaringly obvious clue to the killer's identity will be missed only by the most inattentive of viewers. Still, as I said, the film does have its compensations. Despite the Maltin Film Guide's assertion that Rogers and Raft give "remarkably poor performances," I thought they were just fine. Rogers' character is just a prima donna bitch, that's all, and fairly unlikable, and Raft is his usual wooden/tough-guy self. The film also gives us fine supporting work from Reginald Gardiner (as Lottie's kept husband), Otto Kruger (this was his 100th film) and Skip Homeier (who will always be "Star Trek"'s Dr. Sevrin to me!). Van Heflin easily steals the picture as the accused man, combing NYC like a "TV detective," as he puts it, to clear his name; he is excellent here. And Gene Tierney, my main reason for renting this film in the first place? Well, let's just say that she acquits herself admirably, despite looking a bit tired and delicate, and given her particular circumstances in 1954. At that time, she was battling depression and was just a year away from a seven-year sojourn in various mental institutions, including several dozen electroshock treatments. In her 1979 autobiography "Self-Portrait," the actress writes about the "Black Widow" shoot: "I was not well, my mind was playing tricks. Again, I had trouble with my lines. I would go blank and not recognize the face of someone I had known for years...I held together through force of habit." Trouper that she was, though, Gene turns in a creditable performance. Still, an early line that Peter delivers to Iris--"I'd just as soon go to a party in an insane asylum"--does make the viewer wince in sympathy! And, oh...baby-boomer fans of the old "Petticoat Junction" TV show may be interested to know that Bea Benaderet makes an uncredited appearance in this film; you can't miss her during the party scene. Harder to spot, however, is the young Aaron Spelling. I've watched "Black Widow" twice now and still couldn't locate him. Finding Aaron, it seems, is a much more difficult proposition here than picking out the actual killer!