The Strange Woman (1946 Edgar G Ulmer)

And so once again I find myself reaching for that indispensable volume, 'Who the Devil Made It?' by Peter Bogdanovich, for the lowdown on B movie king Ulmer's low budget independent movie, which paints Hedy Lamarr as a worse woman than Scarlett O'Hara. Well, the first thing I read was that it was an A picture. Ulmer says "Beautiful picture. It nearly got Hedy Lamarr an Academy nomination. It's the only picture where she ever had to act. A beautiful picture - very difficult, very beautiful." Lamarr was acting as executive producer - she got Ulmer involved. (Let's not forget, Ulmer was one of the team who made People on Sunday in Berlin - Billy Wilder's first film.)

Well, it may have had a bigger budget than some of Ulmer's, but let's just say it feels economical. Bangor, Maine, 1820s. A wild child with an alcoholic father grows up as a beauty, marries the elder post office owner, then brazenly begins flirting with his son. She makes him kill her father, then completely rejects him. Then George Sanders comes along...

I found it quite funny. I'm not sure myself it's a great performance from Lamarr - she comes across like some scheming bitch in Dallas or the like. It feels quite risqué for its time. It seems overly underscored, though moves on well. Lucien Andriot shot it. IMDB reports Douglas Sirk directed the opening but I don't know the source for that - it's not in 'Sirk on Sirk' as far as I can see, though he did work with producer Hunt Stromberg, so it's possible, I guess.

I don't want to start getting too scriptural, but the title comes from an early version of Proverbs V - 'the lips of the strange woman drip honey and her mouth is as smooth as oil' - more recent versions update 'strange' to 'immoral' or plain 'adulterous'. And it continues 'But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, Her steps lay hold of hell', which is kind of the end of the film. It was written by Herb Meadow (the film, not the Bible) from Ben Ames Williams' novel, and (again according to IMDB, uncredited) Hunt Stromberg and Ulmer himself.

With Louis Hayward (the son), Gene Lockhart (the father), Hillary Brooke, Rhys Williams, Alan Napier.