SHOCKPROOF (1949)

Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight, pictured) has just been released from prison on parole for murder, having killed someone to protect her no-good thug boyfriend Harry (John Baragrey). Her parole officer is Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde), an upstanding straight arrow who lives with his blind mother and kid brother, and lets Jenny know that she'll have to toe the line under his supervision or risk getting sent back to prison. At first, the two don't get along. Griff has a pleasant demeanor but lets her know he means business, and that any associating with Harry would be a violation of her parole rules. The somewhat hardened Jenny wants to stay out of prison but she's also determined to get back together with Harry. First chance she gets, she contacts Harry and right away, she's caught in a raid at a bookie joint. Griff, who finds himself softening, keeps her out of jail and arranges for her to become his mother's live-in caretaker. Harry, who is still meeting her on the sly, tells Jenny to get Griff to marry her, which is against the rules for Jenny to do while she's on parole, and they'll have Griff in their power. Jenny does, but she also legitimately falls for Griff, and when Harry threatens to give Griff the love letters she has written to him, the two struggle with a gun and she winds up shooting him. From here on, the movie becomes a lovers-on-the-run story as Griff finds work at an oil well and the two live anonymously until the pressures of such a life build to the breaking point.

This is a decent film noir, if never quite as hard-boiled as some noir fans might like. It’s a bit notorious for its weak cop-out ending but that doesn't ruin the film. I've never been very interested in the work of Cornel Wilde; his facial features don't fit together very pleasingly and his acting is so-so. Here, he plays a lightweight average guy who, in honored noir fashion, gets into a situation over his head because of a woman, but he plays everything on the surface, leaving us with very little sense of psychological turmoil underneath. John Baragrey is fine as the baddie, but the real reason to watch this is Patricia Knight, who was Wilde’s wife in real life. She's beautiful with a wholesomely sexy look that you just know is hiding true femme-fatale-hood. She gets to be both blond and brunette in the course of the film, and she looks good both ways. Her performance is so good, you wonder why her career didn't last—this is the third of only five movies she made before she left the business. Douglas Sirk, later known for his glossy color melodramas of the 50s, directs in a straightforward way. The original script, by Samuel Fuller, had a more violent and downbeat ending, and would have rung more true to the story, but the studio wanted a happy ending, no matter how unlikely. The word is that Sirk refused to shoot the last scene, so someone else did it. This is not a masterpiece but for most of its run time, it's a perfectly respectable noir melodrama. [TCM]