I'd never heard of A LADY GAMBLES (1949) but took a chance on mid-career Stanwyck, expecting a victimized female to be preyed on by shell-shocked men in a torporous domestic setting. I was pleasantly surprised by this dynamic panorama of existential terror. Stanwyck does play the hysterical victim but her perverse pursuer is her own inner demon... who drives her to... gamble.
Director Michael Gordon was to be a victim of Senator Joseph McCarthy's blacklist before coming back to direct fluffy things like Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959). Through his handling of the material we glimpse the systemic desperation that blossomed into Las Vegas, that desert oasis of crime-based entertainment.
Robert Preston is the straight-arrow husband dismayed to discover his stylish wife Joan (Stanwyck) is an impulsive trickster who can't be trusted with their life savings. Her passion for gambling is the film's nerve-wracking through-line, as she throws off respectability to indulge her passion for roulette, poker, craps, pawn shops, gangsters, horse races, dark alleys, and loaded dice.
From Chicago to Las Vegas, from Hoover Dam to Mexico, and back again - like a series of PR postcards from the post-war boom - tightly edited vignettes track Joan's downward spiral of degradation. How long will the huband keep bailing her out? Does she really prefer heavy-lidded gangster Steve McNally? What set her on this self-destructive path? And why does her creepy sister blame Joan for their mother's death?
I really enjoyed the technical, aesthetic prowess of this go-for-broke Hollywood melodrama. The savvy script by prolific Roy Huggins (I Love Trouble) is fleshed out with moody cinematography, snappy sets and clothes, expert art direction, and a whirlwind score. In classic Noir style, a hospital sequence precedes a flashback that lasts 80 minutes, before we're jolted back to the present for a no-holds-barred finish.
There are at least three levels to watch for. One: post-war marriage, uneasy power dynamic between the sexes, with the lure of a bohemian idyll, against the background of a national wave of corruption and easy money. Two: the relentless twitching of a Freudian guilt complex over the death-in-childbirth of Joan's mother. Three: a woman's need for adventure outside the prescribed roles of a conformist culture, a positive existential need for freedom.
And maybe a fourth: what is this thing called money?
Director Michael Gordon was to be a victim of Senator Joseph McCarthy's blacklist before coming back to direct fluffy things like Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959). Through his handling of the material we glimpse the systemic desperation that blossomed into Las Vegas, that desert oasis of crime-based entertainment.
Robert Preston is the straight-arrow husband dismayed to discover his stylish wife Joan (Stanwyck) is an impulsive trickster who can't be trusted with their life savings. Her passion for gambling is the film's nerve-wracking through-line, as she throws off respectability to indulge her passion for roulette, poker, craps, pawn shops, gangsters, horse races, dark alleys, and loaded dice.
From Chicago to Las Vegas, from Hoover Dam to Mexico, and back again - like a series of PR postcards from the post-war boom - tightly edited vignettes track Joan's downward spiral of degradation. How long will the huband keep bailing her out? Does she really prefer heavy-lidded gangster Steve McNally? What set her on this self-destructive path? And why does her creepy sister blame Joan for their mother's death?
I really enjoyed the technical, aesthetic prowess of this go-for-broke Hollywood melodrama. The savvy script by prolific Roy Huggins (I Love Trouble) is fleshed out with moody cinematography, snappy sets and clothes, expert art direction, and a whirlwind score. In classic Noir style, a hospital sequence precedes a flashback that lasts 80 minutes, before we're jolted back to the present for a no-holds-barred finish.
There are at least three levels to watch for. One: post-war marriage, uneasy power dynamic between the sexes, with the lure of a bohemian idyll, against the background of a national wave of corruption and easy money. Two: the relentless twitching of a Freudian guilt complex over the death-in-childbirth of Joan's mother. Three: a woman's need for adventure outside the prescribed roles of a conformist culture, a positive existential need for freedom.
And maybe a fourth: what is this thing called money?