Verbose, old-fashioned, studio bound and highly theatrical court- room melodrama, due to director-playwright Clifford Odets, who wrote the screenplay and provided mostly dialogues and plot points, but no cinematic flight. Being a man of letters, his best film work was as screenwriter of films like "Humoresque", "Notorious" and "Sweet Smell of Success". As a director, here Odets does not even take the camera out of the sound stages for a single moment, and in spite of having James Wong Howe as cinematographer it is neither an attractive wide-screen black and white film in the tradition of "The Innocents", "Sons and Lovers" or "Rapture": in fact, this movie should have been in color. But somehow it works, in spite of our desperation for the long, endless interrogations (especially those conducted by Sanford Meisner). It works for obvious reasons: first, for pure cinematic connection, only appreciated by cinéphiles, as we watch the post-Orson Welles career of an aging Rita Hayworth, as if Gilda had been lost for many years and resurfaced on page one as a murderous adulteress; and then, for several very good performances by the other ladies in the cast: Mildred Dunnock and Katherine Squire, plus the lovely presence of Myrna Fahey, just a few months before achieving film immortality as "Madeline " in Roger Corman's version of "The Fall of the House of Usher". The men are fine too (Franciosa, Young, Meisner, Griffith, Adler and the rest) but this is a woman's picture.
Review of The Story on Page One
