(1964) 3 Nathan Southern As the master of numerous genres, the ill-fated British screen veteran Basil Dearden made an excursion into suspense territory with this little-known English thriller from 1964, based on Catherine Arley's novel La Femme de Paille. Woman begins with the most weathered premise in the history of noir. Two veritable strangers -- home nurse aide Maria Gina Lollobrigida and her charge, playboy Anthony Richmond Sean Connery -- conspire to have Maria marry Anthony's sadistic millionaire uncle, Charles (Ralph Richardson), and agree to murder him in order to collect and divide the insurance money after he writes her into his 20-million-dollar will. The picture begins as a kind of "drama of manners," each scene meticulously, almost theatrically staged, the lines read stiffly and properly by the three European leads - mannerism atop a rising undercurrent of suspense. Yet, during the film's final act, Dearden springs an outrageous twist on the audience, recoloring everything from the previous 90 minutes and forcing us to reexamine our perceptions of the characters, violently undercutting the then-screen images established by Connery and Lollobrigida. To say more would ruin the picture for viewers, but Woman of Straw actually begins to foreshadow David Mamet by about 20 years, in his fascination with "shell games" onscreen -- and one discovers that Dearden has actually constructed Woman's narrative as a series of Chinese boxes, each hidden inside of one and enclosing another. The dramatic architecture is thus carefully calculated and complex enough to resemble a jigsaw puzzle -- a truth that drew fire from some critics who ignorantly attacked the picture as confusing, and a complexity best summed up by one of Connery's final lines: "It takes a very sane person to plan something perfect." The film's final twist is outrageous and implausible -- it would retain far greater credibility without the concluding ten minutes -- but a dourer wrap-up certainly would have incensed viewers. For some unknown reason, Woman of Straw sank into almost complete obscurity in the decades following its release. It has received no video or DVD issue and rarely appears in repertory cinemas, but crops up on American cable from time to time, where it has attained a small cult following.

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Woman of Straw (1964)

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Questionable for Children

genres

Crime

sub-genres

Crime Thriller

category

Feature

directed by

Basil Dearden

countries

UK

released

1964

run time

117 min.

produced by

United Artists

released by

United Artists

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by Michael Betzold synopsis

In this British melodrama based on a French novel by Catherine Arley, Sean Connery plays Anthony Richmond, a money-hungry young man enraged that his rich, dying uncle doesn't plan to include him in his will. Instead, Charles Richmond (Ralph Richardson) plans to give his fortune to charity. Anthony recruits a young nurse, Maria (Gina Lollobrigida), for a nefarious scheme. Her job is to care for the old man and get him to marry her and change the will so she gets his fortune. Then she will give Anthony a three-million-dollar share. Maria does her job well, but she comes to actually love Charles.

characteristics

- Cons And Scams

- Money

- MD

- Murder

- Nephew

- Physician

- Nurse

- Marriage

- Man-servant

- Investigation

- Inheritance

- Kill

- Love

- Manipulation

- LPN

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