Shadow of a Woman (1946) User Reviews

Not-bad programmer, a `jep' based (as always) on the old adage `Marry in haste...'

[bmacv · 6/10 · 22 August 2002]

Honeymooning after a whirlwind courtship, newlyweds Andrea King and Helmut Dantine cross the palm of a Gypsy fortune-teller with silver to have their futures read. The crone's face collapses like an ill-baked souffle when she gazes on Dantine's life-lines. `I haf nut'ing to tell you,' she stammers, then slithers off into the night.

Next day at the beach, a boulder the size of an asteroid rolls down a hill, almost squashing Dantine – the first of many such `accidents' which befall him. Her groom, King decides, has enemies. Back in San Francisco, King settles into his gloomy old Nob Hill mansion, inhabited too by his widowed sister and his crippled nephew, who welcome her coldly. Another surprise is a sickly young son by a previous marriage, of whom (and of which) King knew nothing.

Dantine, it turns out, is a quack doctor whose diet regiments cause his patients to drop like flies. His son, on the other hand, is heir to a fortune, and his regimen of nothing but orange juice begins to look to King like a plot to kill him....

Shadow of a Woman (meaningless title, by the way) is nothing more than a watchable programmer. Both principals were European-born, Dantine in Vienna (retaining a heavy accent), King in Paris (accent-free, though her English is wooden). The movie accepts and reproduces the conventions of the `jep' with few, if any, new twists: Dantine is a controlling husband who decides everything for his wife (a role he would reprise the next year in Whispering City), including how she feels – `You're tired;' `You're hysterical.' King, however, shows more spunk, and earlier on, than most of the swooning wives this kind of melodrama requires. If you can swallow its conventions, Shadow of a Woman is not a bad hour and a quarter – sort of a dress rehearsal for The House on Telegraph Hill five years later, a better movie that, especially in its setting, resembles it.

"I've Made a Terrible Mistake!"

[maryszd · 7/10 · 9 May 2006]

The beautiful and financially independent Brooke Gifford comes to regret her hasty marriage to quack "Doctor" Eric Ryder. Too late, she discovers their marriage is just a ruse to get custody of his son back and steal his inheritance. Why did she marry him in the first place? He's a divorced guy with a bizarre health food fixation (he's written a book called "Are You Eating Yourself Into the Grave?"). But it's the usual story. She was lonely; there weren't many marriageable men around during just-ended WWII. Slickly manipulative Eric, in the typical style of abusive men, swept her off her feet. Brooke's now older-and-wiser narration tells the story in the form of flashbacks.

This fascinating postwar film (over) dramatizes the way women were sucked back into domesticity after years of emotional and financial self-sufficiency during the war--and the pitfalls it held for them. Thank god Brooke still has some money and a house in San Bernardino--it gives her the means to fight back. It also enables her to have a terrific wardrobe--just because her husband's a potential murderer doesn't mean she can't look great. And you can be sure that cheapskate Eric wouldn't pop for all those trips to the hairdresser and manicurist, either.

Eric's health-food fixation is interesting, too. We think of healthy food as virtuous these days, but this film shows that in postwar America, too much of a concern with nutrition was considered quackery, if not worse (and in this case, it is worse). Eric, talks with a bogus European accent--"Have face in me, my dahling!" he tells Brooke. There's also a lot about women being "tired" in this film. Eric is always telling women they're "tired" so he can get them out of the way. How tired can these women actually be? They probably worked twelve hour shifts during the war and now they're supposed to be fragile?

The title, "Shadow of a Woman" is significant. The way women were driven from the public sphere into lives of forced domesticity after the war indeed led them to become shadows of their former selves.

Remake this better next time

[Jim Tritten · 5/10 · 26 August 2002]

Interesting but flawed mystery set in post-war California. A newly married woman who grows afraid of her newly met husband is a good premise for a movie and one that Alfred Hitchcock would have probably done better with. There is a doubt in this film whether the husband is indeed guilty of something…although there is no doubt that he is suspicious. Suspicion itself if not enough to salvage this film.

The writing could have been better. Some of the plot is too hard to swallow. We are cheated out of seeing what brought the newlyweds together. What kind of doctor is the husband? He claims he is not an MD and others say he worked in the entertainment field.

The acting could have been better. The wife accepts too much aberrant behavior from her odd husband and the folks he attracts. By opening the film with a flashback, we already know that the wife survives to tell the tale – thus robbing the story of some needed tension.

Not a terrible movie, but one that could have been better and might be if it were remade.

Decent

[ivegonemod · 3 November 2012]

Another decent but very flawed movie. First off, the leading man Helmut, really needed to tighten up his skills. He was as stiff as a mannequin here and then some. Why does he have an accent and his sister and nephew do not? Andrea King's character is a total idiot, but she is not alone. She catches on quick enough, but is still an idiot. Her new husband's family is so afraid of him that they are willing to follow his strict diet advice. One day it's carrots only, the next day raw fruit only, another day a piece of fish only. He's a "doctor", and believes in eating simply; at least when nobody he's trying to fool is watching. He often goes to a café and has steak away from the family.

Another movie where the woman just stands around looking stupid while two men fight; one to save her. She doesn't lift one finger. Can't she pick up a chair or a lamp or something?

But is it really a....

[ablbodyed-2 · 6/10 · 30 September 2023]

True noir? Just because it's in black-and-white and is contemporary to the second half of the 1940's doesn't make it a noir. A noir film has a conniving, duplicitous woman taking advantage of a man weakened by his unhealthy attraction to her. And this weakness almost always brings him to do things he would, in all probability, never do. Here the man is the duplicitous one, though marrying someone to give a child a mother figure is not really a bad thing, is it? She would have some say in the treatment of little Phillip, and I doubt that she would let the starving continue. The absolute contempt for what we recognize as holistic medicine is quite revealing. I remember that chiropractors were reviled by the main-stream medical profession. In the mid-50's. Chiropractors were considered unethical and dangerous. I do recall actual films of the horror stories of people whose health (and LIVES) were destroyed by failure to go to a "regular doctor". That is an early example of the societal cost of the almost over-weaning adulation of the medical profession in the USA.

In any event, the "bad guy" never threatened the main character and treated her with respect and a kind of aloof affection. You have to question her motivations in marrying someone she knew for such a short time. In fact, their meeting to his death was about ten days. The acting was good, the transformation of negative characters to good ones was pretty well done. I enjoyed the movie. And the banister on that grand staircase was gorgeous. I wonder if that was created for the film. If so, kudos to the set designer. I do have another nit to pick. When I read these reviews, I see that no one uses hyphens. Sentences have words that make no sense without connecting the meaning with hyphens. I guess they don't teach grammar any more, and texting dumbs down people even more. Just a rant from an old man who mourns for the loss of such a simple sign of real literacy.

rolling rock

[SnoopyStyle · 4/10 · 25 January 2022]

Brooke Gifford Ryder (Andrea King) goes to the police with suspicions about her new husband Dr. Eric Ryder (Helmut Dantine). First, she suspects someone tried to kill him with a giant rock on the beach. Two men with a dog are following them.

The giant fake rock is hilarious. It's not a good start and that's after a fairly underwhelming opening with Brooke being interviewed by the police. With the tiny little dog, this movie seems to be making fun of the genre. The plot is a mess and Brooke is unpleasant. This is a B-crime noir but after the rock, this is one that I can't take seriously.

Convoluted and confusing with poor acting and characters hard to care about

[jacobs-greenwood · 4/10 · 7 December 2016]

The plot and the acting performed by its cast make it very difficult to stay engaged in this below average noirish drama, making it a poor "thriller". As convoluted, unusual, and somewhat confusing as the story is to begin with, the characterizations also don't provide anyone with whom an audience can identify with or trust, such that one just doesn't care about them or what happens.

Directed by Joseph Santley, it was written by Whitman Chambers and C. Graham Baker from a story by Virginia Perdue. It's about a woman who marries a man she's only known for a week, and gets what she deserves (though, unfortunately not completely).

It begins with Brooke Gifford Ryder (Andrea King) in a police detective's (Paul Harvey, uncredited, with Monte Blue) office relating the events of "what happened" (e.g. in flashback). Evidently, she'd married a man (Helmut Dantine) who is some kind of dietician "doctor", one who mistrusts all other doctors, their medicines and operations, and instead relies on an unusual diet and rest to "cure" his patients. As it turns out, Dr. Eric Ryder's patients are dying off, too weak for their immune systems to fight whatever ails them.

Additionally, Ryder is in the midst of a custody battle with his ex- wife Louise (Peggy Knudsen) over his son Philip (Larry Geiger). But, per a lie Louise told him, Ryder doesn't really believe that the son is his biologically. So, he is trying to starve Philip to death, like all his other patients.

Philip lives in a large house with his "father" Eric, along with Ryder's sister Emma (Lisa Golm) and her son Carl (John Alvin), who of course is also being "treated" by Ryder, for a bad leg (however, Carl's leg heals remarkably, later, when he needs it before the story's climax). Louise's lawyer David MacKellar (William Prince), with his photographer (Don McGuire), "dogs" Ryder throughout the movie, which eventually leads to the film's unearned and incredulous ending.

Edgy Little Sleeper

[LeonLouisRicci · 8/10 · 20 October 2012]

A Film-Noir that is the type that uses psychological persuasion and medical methods to subtly terrorize and control victims with sheer will and a charming personality. There are no guns or physical attacks, it is all done with romance and power. It is one of the few, if any, films that dealt with naturalistic or holistic medicine and focus on diet and exercise to cure, that is used as a sure sign of villainy because of the dated belief of inherent quackery.

This has a creepy feel and an unnerving atmosphere of a small budget that can work to its advantage and an unknown cast that also adds to character maladies and a sense of losing one's footing.

A really effective story of forced proximity and family tie downs. A little sleeper that is only let down by a take no chance happy ending that is used in so many otherwise edgy films of the era, even in the Noir genre, that end it all with a period and more times than not would be more progressive with three dots...

sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 21 October 2012]

Helmut Dantine is an alternative medicine expert, and Andrea King is his unsuspecting new bride in "Shadow of a Woman," a 1946 low-budget film.

The story is done in flashback, and in the beginning, we see Brooke (King) telling her story to the authorities.

Dantine is Dr. Eric Ryder, who meets Brooke and marries her a few days later. The first indication she has that there's a problem occurs when he tells her he has been married before and has a son (he conveniently left all that out previously). Also, his ex-wife is trying to get the boy away from him.

We soon find out why when we enter Eric's funereal home, where he lives with his lame brother Carl (John Alvin) and his frosty mother (Peggy Knudsen). Eric has the adorable little boy, who is ill, on some sort of crazy diet that seems to be starving him. Not what you'd call quick on the uptake, it's a while before the truth about hubby starts to dawn on Brooke.

Andrea King was certainly a lovely woman, a little reminiscent of Vera Miles, and she probably deserved better than this. Dantine makes an attractive villain. It was hard to get into this film as it moved very slowly, and also, it was easy to figure out.

Someone on this board indicated that this film was underwritten by the AMA. I couldn't find any information on this. The AMA isn't big on alternative medicine, but thankfully, not all of them are like this doctor.

Absolutely Terrifying

[Handlinghandel · 8/10 · 21 August 2002]

This is the kind of movie I saw on late-night TV as a kid that made me a devoted film noir fan. Its atmosphere is astonishingly eerie. It reminds me, in this regard, very much of the (better) "My Name Is Julia Ross."

The child, emaciated from a diet of nothing but orange juice. The charming but truly sinister new husband. The spooky home to which the bride comes.

It's that little boy that clinches it is a must!

One of the best low budget noirs I've ever seen starring people I've never heard of ...

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 21 October 2012]

...or maybe I should say it was a low priority rather than low budget noir, at least for Warner Brothers. WWII has just ended and Warner's A list stars have not yet returned from war, so the B list actors got a chance from 1942-1947 to take the lead.

This starts out as many a noir starts out - a lovely but lonely gal marries in haste to a dashing stranger - a doctor at that!. But beginning on their honeymoon it seems like someone is trying to kill her new husband and not being the least bit subtle about it. Also, there are strange people following the new couple around and taking pictures. Oh, and hubby forgot to mention he's been married before, has a son, and is in a nasty custody fight with his ex-wife.

The art design is cleverly done. The surroundings start out bright and cheery - on the beach at a seaside resort. As the new bride encounters layer after layer of suspense and uncertainty, the environment becomes as gloomy as her potential future as she ends up living in her husband's creaky old home with two sour looking servants that don't seem to like her any more than she trusts them.

I say that this seems like a low priority film to WB because there are some plot holes and goofs that just look silly in retrospect. The police consider the deceased an accidental death because he has fallen from a balcony although he carries clear marks and bruises from a beating? The police chief has the picture of the President on his wall, but it happens to be the President that died the year before (FDR)?? The new bride writes letters to a trusted friend about people she doesn't trust and then gives those letters to those untrusted people to mail?? The new husband has a distinct European accent but his sister does not??

The script is great overall, the atmosphere perfect, and the acting adequate, in particular I have to give kudos to Helmut Dantine as the creepy acting new husband. I'm sure in 1946, with memories of the war in Europe still fresh in everyone's minds, the rather Germanic accent of Helmut Dantine added just the right amount of suspicion and mystery to his character. Plus, note the subtle undercurrents of the coming cold war and red scares in the rising element of suspicion against anyone who is "different" - in this case Helmut Dantine's character who dares to question conventional medicine and even uses hypnotism on his patients - oh the horror! He MUST be a Communist! (Tongue in cheek here folks, this film is not about politics!)

The Mysterious Miss King!!

[kidboots · 8/10 · 27 September 2011]

Born in Paris with a mysterious parentage, big things were predicted for Andrea King, one of the 1940's most beautiful and enigmatic starlets but she unwittingly fell foul of Bette Davis. She was given the star part in "Hotel Berlin", a role Bette had desperately wanted so when Andrea tested for and won the role of Bessie in "The Corn is Green", Davis who was the star had her removed from the picture. Andrea had her Warners contract suspended when she refused to do "Stallion Road" (Alexis Smith substituted). So between making enemies in high places and bad career choices, her cinema career was more a case of what might have been. Still she was good when given a good role in an A grade movie ("The Man I Love") and memorable in this very creepy film noir.

When Brooke (King) marries natural health doctor Eric Ryder (Helmut Dantine) after a whirlwind courtship she finds she is in the "shadow of a woman" - namely his ex-wife Louise (played by the beautiful Peggy Knudson) who is fighting for custody of their child, Phillip - two things Eric didn't tell Brooke about!!! Brooke's impulsiveness (she looks so intelligent) is explained away by the fact that she is in a vulnerable state because of the death of her parents and also because of her feelings of becoming an old maid!! But it doesn't take her long to realise she has made a mistake - strange accidents occur - a boulder falls from a beach side cliff and Freeman, whose wife was once Ryder's patient, takes a shot at him when they are honeymooning at a mountain cabin.

Natural health was still looked on skeptically during the 1940s, not helped by the high profile flamboyant Bernarr Macfadden, who founded the use of Physical culture and fasting as a way to rejuvenate the body. He was also branded as a "kook" and a charlatan, denounced by the medical profession and also claimed that clean living would enable him to live to 150!! So there was plenty of scope to make naturopaths in movies look like the nuts most people thought they were!!! When Brooke is taken to his home she finds a repressed sister living in fear, a crippled nephew, Carl, whom Eric will not allow to have an operation as it is against his belief in holistic medicine and little Phillip, his son, who is being starved to death on a diet consisting of orange juice!!

He may espouse natural medicine for other people (the family dinner is usually a small serve of vegetables followed by - nothing else!!) but Eric makes sure he is fed only the best steak available at the local diner. His attitude to Phillip also has an evil twist - he is convinced Phillip is not his son and there is also a little matter of inheritance - Phillip is the heir to the family fortune. The "starving the children for their inheritance" plot was done in a far more sinister fashion in "Night Nurse" (1931) and with Barbara Stanwyck as the feisty star it had a lot more impact. Still this movie was well plotted, scary (especially one scene on a balcony!!) and topical. Leah Baird and Monte Blue, both with small parts (Baird as Genevieve's mother and Blue as policeman Mike) were actors who had done their best work in the silent days.

I Liked It A Lot!

[t-77778 · 8/10 · 14 June 2021]

I caught this movie on Saturday Night Noir. I wasn't planning on watching it, but it came on after NIAGARA and I left the television on while I was cleaning and getting ready for bed. It sucked me in! I really liked the atmosphere of the movie and the spooky old house. I liked the characters. I especially liked Andrea King and the little boy.

During the commercials I looked up the movie and saw that it wasn't much of a success when it came out. I was surprised because I didn't think it was that bad. I watch a lot of old movies (seldom ever watch anything new to be honest.) and I am sort of a hyper person who constantly keeps busy. I often half watch movies while doing another task like working (I work from home online) cleaning, cooking etc. A movie has to be pretty good to get me to actually sit down. I sat down for this movie. Was it the best acting I have ever seen? No, but the main character was likable enough and the story good enough, that I didn't care. It wasn't Oscar worthy, but most of the movies I like aren't. I liked this movie very much. It kept my attention and kept me entertained to the end.

That Poor Little Boy!

[Handlinghandel · 8/10 · 12 September 2003]

Andrea King makes a mistake when she marries sinister alternative-medicine doctor Helmut Dantine. She realizes it pretty quickly, as we see in a story told from her point of view in flashback.

He seems like a truly loathsome person. It's hard, though, not to wonder if this movie was unwritten by the AMA. After all, not ALL people practicing alternative therapies, even back then are/were evil and/or quacks.

The most poignant part is the man's son, who is being held captive and being given a horrifyingly Spartan diet, ostensibly for his health.

That part will send chills up your spine. (If it knocks your spine out of quack, call a chiropractor.)

acceptable low-budget film noir

[paulet · 6 October 1999]

This is one of those postwar "shrink-anxiety" movies in which an >unscrupulous psychotherapist manipulates, blackmails, or robs >his patients. It's not bad of its type, though nothing out of >the ordinary. *But* it's the answer to a truly obscure trivia >question, because in an early scene, the villain and the heroine >have dinner in a restaurant where the band is playing "How >Little We Know", the Hoagy Carmichael song that Lauren Bacall >sang in "To Have and Have Not"!

Good reason not to marry a person after knowing them only a week.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 23 January 2022]

"Shadow of a Woman" is a very creepy and exciting film from Warner Brothers. While you'd think it was a B-movie due to its no-name cast, the film runs at 78 minutes.... A-picture length.

When the story begins, a woman foolishly marries a man she's known less than a week. Soon after this, LOTS of clues trickle in which would indicate she married a man who has a lot to hide. But the man's infamy turns out to be far greater than she first suspected....what is actually going on is something you'll have to see for yourself.

The best thing about this film is its originality. So much of the film is difficult to predict and I nearly gave it a 9. The reason I didn't was the big confrontation scene at the end....where you see a HUGE cliche. This is because the lady just stands there and does NOTHING to help or stop the maniac....a bad cliche.

Better in Concept than Execution

[dougdoepke · 1 February 2017]

Okay slice of psychodrama and woman-in-danger flick. Still the script remains a rather uneasy mix of several elements. There're shadowy elements of noir, just emerging in '46, but mostly it's whether wife Brooke (King) can undo husband Eric's (Dantine) evil schemes and still survive. Can't say the plot's too original since Brooke marries Eric on short notice, not realizing his dark past. He poses as a doctor with unconventional methods, but just how "unconventional" is he. King looks good in 40's outfits, still I wish she (or director Santley) could have worked up more emotion. That would have heightened tension as the story winds down. But then the showdown is not what is ordinarily expected in this type movie. There's a good twist concerning the characters that I didn't see coming. So there are some surprises. Too bad that culminating fist-fight is none too plausible given Carl's (Alvin) gimpy leg. But dig that all- night diner that Joe (Erdman) presides over. It can compete with any of noir's many iconic diners.

All in all, the flick's an okay time-passer, but doesn't really pack the tension that's waiting there in the concept.

Hitchcock like good suspense

[searchanddestroy-1 · 15 December 2023]

There is not so much to say about this film, it is in the mood of this period, forties, with many psychological thrillers involving mysterious husbands or even wives, pulled by amazing photography work. This film is easily available and curiously always under the radar of movie goers. But I repeat, there were so many more or less like this one, you can confound all of those marerials. Plus it is rather short, only seventy eight minutes, and Helmut Dantine is the proper choice for such a subject. I think he was an underrated actor, he would have deserved better. But this film noir is really worth watching.