Dishonored Lady

Dishonored Lady – This 1947 melodrama is directed by Robert Stevenson and was a vehicle for Hedy Lamarr. Apparently, the film catches Lamarr during the downward trajectory of a career that was ultimately disappointing – the picture seems rather cheaply made, with curious stylized sets, and an odd mise-en-scene: there are several crane shots taken from absurdly high-angles, an elaborate montage that merely shows Lamarr and a male companion taking an elevator to her offices at a fashion magazine – it’s as if the movie was made for small-town audiences that had never seen an elevator -- and several other scenes staged on huge stairways that seem incongruously vast for the tenement and apartment sets that they are supposed to simulate. The opening fifteen minutes is jazzy and weird – many of the shots don’t match, the camera is too close in some scenes; the set-ups and camera angles seem noirish, that is devised to hide deficiencies in the scenery. There are lots of low-angles showing ceilings and the opening sequence is staged sempiternal gloom – the headlights of motorcycle cops churning through intense dark. Lamarr plays a promiscuous fashion-writer who repents her wild ways. She has tried to commit suicide, but, instead, merely crashed her vehicle into the garden of a brooding, domineering psychiatrist. The psychiatrist counsels Lamarr’s character to abandon her glamorous job and recuperate, hiding out in an apartment building where she makes paintings. (At one point, the psychiatrist portentously says: “She’s growing a new soul. Stay off the grass!” – warning a potential suitor away from Lamar who is trying to “find herself”.) Lamarr falls for a small-town medical student, desires to marry him, but, then, her sordid past – which, by our standards, doesn’t seem all that terrible – catches up with her. There’s a murder, a trial, and a happy ending. Lamarr is pretty but doesn’t seem desirable – she’s oddly remote. The male lead playing the righteous doctor is dull and irritating, but the cads are a spectacular collection of drunks, dandies, and fops – the film springs to life when they’re on-screen. The delirious mise-en-scene of the opening reel soon resolves into a standard Hollywood style – invisible mostly with hidden sutures where edits are required and there’s not a lot to see after the first twenty minutes.