Woman of Straw

United Kingdom

1964

122 Min

Color

1.85:1

English

Currently 3.2/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

|

SCR Michael Relph, Stanley Mann, Robert Muller, Catherine Arley

CAST Gina Lollobrigida, Sean Connery, Ralph Richardson, Alexander Knox, Johnny Sekka, Laurence Hardy, Peter Madden, Danny Daniels, Noel Howlett, Robert Bruce, Michael Goodliffe, André Morell

PROD DES Ken Adam

Synopsis

When a wealthy old man with a world-hating disposition needs a nurse, his nephew who hates him and for good reason makes sure that the nurse he gets is the one that the nephew wants. Mr. Connery (of course) has a plan.

Let me describe the wheelchair-bound uncle this way, using the nephew’s own words. He treats his servants [black] as dogs, and his dogs as servants. Nurse Maria resists the nephew’s plans for her at first, but 50 million dollars is very, very tempting. Nonetheless, her resistance — and eventually making him come to her, the uncle, that is, not her to him — is what eventually wins him over. And believe it or not, her charm not only works on the nephew, as it has all along, but the uncle’s behavior seems to take a turn for the better as well.

I’d have to agree that wealthy (and unlikeable) people being murdered by relatives for their money is old hat stuff in detective fiction, and maybe this is what turned the professional reviewers off. That and the fact that it takes a long time to develop the characters with very little happening. I didn’t mind it at all. Delicious! Sean Connery is super suave, Miss Lollabrigida is delectable with just a hint of naivete, and Ralph Richardson as an upper-crust man who’s unhappy with both life and wealth — it is a role he was born to play.

And when the expected event happens, it doesn’t happen the way I expected it to happen, and there’s no way I could have turned this movie off from that point on, no matter what. I was glued to the chair. Suspense? Yes, and I’m only sorry I can’t tell you more. —Mysteryfile.com

Director

Basil Dearden

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of… read more

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of Dock Green television series. His last Ealing film, Out of the Clouds, was released in 1955.

In later years he became associated with the writer and producer Michael Relph, and the two men made films on subjects generally not tackled by British cinema in this era. These included homosexuality (Victim, 1961) and race relations (Pool of London, 1951; Sapphire, 1959). In the late 1960s Dearden also made some big-scale epics including Khartoum (1966), with Charlton Heston, and the Victorian era black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969), again with Michael Relph.

His last film was The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) with Roger Moore, with whom he later made three episodes of the television series The Persuaders!: Overture, Powerswitch and To the Death, Baby. Dearden was killed in a car accident in 1971, in a horrific crash on the M40 near the spot where the character Harold Pelham – the Man Who Haunted Himself – is supposed to have crashed his car in the opening sequence of the film.

He had two sons, Torquil Dearden and the screenwriter and director James Dearden.

The film critic David Thomson does not hold Dearden in high regard. He writes: “[Dearden’s] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning”.

More positively, for the Australian film writer, Brian McFarlane: “Dearden’s films offer, among other rewards, a fascinating barometer of public taste at its most nearly consensual over three decades.” —Wikipedia

read less