WOMAN IN HIDING (1950)

Neatly twisted film noir has a lot going for it, but misses top-tier status; less from a lack of plausibility (common enough) than from a lack of inevitability.  Ida Lupino gets things off to startling effect as a newlywed in flight from her honeymoon, speeding away from deceiving husband Stephen McNally only to plunge to her death when she drives off the road and into the river.  That suits him fine since it’s not Ida he wants, but the furniture factory she’s just inherited from her late dad.  He killed him, too.  But if Ida’s dead, where’s the body?  He won’t own the factory till they find her.  So, he’s on the hunt and she’s on the run.  Enter free-spirited Howard Duff, halfheartedly running a newsstand at the bus station when this lost soul comes by.  Intrigued, if not entirely convinced by her story, he just might turn her over to the authorities as one mixed up dame (her picture’s in the paper) . . . or phone the husband to come pick up his deluded wife.  Director Michael Gordon can’t quite make all the pieces add up, but in a series of tight set pieces, he shows consistent visual imagination, much helped by long-time M-G-M glam cinematographer William Daniels, freed at Universal to show off some impressive noir bona fides with near night-owl vision.  (Check out a chase in an Emergency Stairwell and a gasp-worthy climax in the darkened furniture factory.)  Plus a bit of Hollywood matchmaking as co-stars Lupino & Duff married next year.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: No composer credited, but lots of tasty Miklós Rósza stock cues help to build tension.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Universal released an even better woman’s POV film noir this year, WOMAN ON THE RUN/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/woman-on-run-1950.html

CONTEST:  Not the only 1950 film to have a ‘corpse’ narrate the film.  Name the other one to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up on a film of your choice.