Shockproof (1949)

Director:

Douglas Sirk

Writers:

Helen Deutsch (writer)
Samuel Fuller (writer)

Release Date:

25 January 1949 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Drama

Plot:

Jenny Marsh, still dangerously attractive after 5 years in prison for killing a man in defense of her shady lover Harry...

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman

Cast

Cornel Wilde	...	Griff Marat
Patricia Knight	...	Jenny Marsh
John Baragrey	...	Harry Wesson
Esther Minciotti	...	Mrs. Marat
Howard St. John	...	Sam Brooks
Russell Collins	...	Frederick Bauer
Charles Bates	...	Tommy Marat

Also Known As:

The Lovers (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

79 min | Germany:80 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Director Douglas Sirk signed to make this film on the basis of Sam Fuller's original screenplay, which was called "The Lovers" and ended in a shoot-out. Co-producer Helen Deutsch rewrote the script and added a cop-out ending Sirk disliked. Sirk later said Deutsch's script changes ruined the film by depriving it of the sense of doom in Fuller's original story.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)

Interesting noir with distinctive Sirkian twist

Released from prison after five years for killing a man to protect her gambling lover (John Baragrey), hard case Patricia Knight comes under the purview of parole officer Cornel Wilde. Trying to keep her from the clutches of the still-infatuated Baragrey, Wilde moves her into his household as companion to his blind, widowed mother. Inevitably they fall in love and wed secretly, since marriage is a violation of parole. Not one to read a Dear John letter lightly, Baragrey attempts to blackmail Knight with old billets-doux but is shot in a struggle. Wilde, on the verge of turning her in, relents, and, in a long sequence that was reprised almost exactly two years later in Tomorrow is Another Day, joins her on the lam, making ends meet as a day-laborer and living in shacks. But the strain of poverty and fear of apprehension begin to corrode....

Douglas Sirk, later to reach fulfilment in lushly overwrought melodramas like Written on the Wind, shows a nice flair for the conventions of noir in this well scripted and acted film, which maintains its integrity until its rabbit-out-of-the-hat ending -- surely not the one penned by co-scenarist Samuel Fuller. (The title, by the way, seems basically meaningless but to have been chosen for its purely abstract, noirish resonance.)