A Woman's Secret was sandwiched between several Film Noir titles early in Director Nicholas Ray's career. Maureen O'Hara and Melvyn Douglas play mentors of up and coming singer Gloria Grahame after O'Hara's career fails because of losing her voice. Grahame is shot after a radio show one night, and the rest of the film is devoted to revealing the relationships between O'Hara, Douglas, and Grahame and what happened. As a director, Nicholas Ray had a reputation of obtaining strong performances from his casts, and this film is no exception. O'Hara has an especially unusual role for her type as a more assertive character than usual. Douglas plays his usual nice guy self, and Grahame is very good as the ditsy singer who doesn't appreciate her career. The supporting cast is good also.
While not truly a Noir film, A Woman's Secret does have a few elements often identified with the genre: a shooting, story told in flashback, and a few red herring suspects. The Noir-ish feel of the film at the beginning changes to melodrama and then is later offset by the comedic moments between Jay C. Flippen, the inspector, and Mary Philips as the inspector's amateur sleuth wife, resulting in an uneven tone for the film when there should/could have been dramatic build-up. These exchanges occur before the build-up leading to the denouement. Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the script based on Vicki Baum's novel Mortgage For Life. O'Hara did her own singing here, but Grahame's singing was dubbed. The film is notable as an early character driven drama in Nicholas Ray's career, which would become the hallmark of most of his later films. **1/2 of 4 stars.
While not truly a Noir film, A Woman's Secret does have a few elements often identified with the genre: a shooting, story told in flashback, and a few red herring suspects. The Noir-ish feel of the film at the beginning changes to melodrama and then is later offset by the comedic moments between Jay C. Flippen, the inspector, and Mary Philips as the inspector's amateur sleuth wife, resulting in an uneven tone for the film when there should/could have been dramatic build-up. These exchanges occur before the build-up leading to the denouement. Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the script based on Vicki Baum's novel Mortgage For Life. O'Hara did her own singing here, but Grahame's singing was dubbed. The film is notable as an early character driven drama in Nicholas Ray's career, which would become the hallmark of most of his later films. **1/2 of 4 stars.