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Woman of Straw

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1964 British crime thriller by Basil Dearden

Woman of Straw
Original film poster
Directed byBasil Dearden
Written byRobert Muller
Stanley Mann
Michael Relph
Based onLa Femme de Paille
1956 novel
by Catherine Arley
Produced byMichael Relph
StarringGina Lollobrigida
Sean Connery
Ralph Richardson
CinematographyOtto Heller
Edited byJohn D. Guthridge
Music byNorman Percival
Production
company		Relph-Dearden Productions
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • 28 April 1964 (1964-04-28)
Running time122 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.7 million

Woman of Straw is a 1964 British crime thriller directed by Basil Dearden and starring Gina Lollobrigida and Sean Connery. It was written by Robert Muller and Stanley Mann, adapted from the 1954 novel La Femme de paille by Catherine Arley.

Plot

Playboy Anthony Richmond schemes to acquire the £50 million fortune of his uncle Charles Richmond, a tyrannical, arrogant wheelchaired tycoon, by persuading Maria Marcello, the new Italian nurse he has hired to marry the old man in exchange of one million pounds.

A sincere Maria endures the verbal and emotional abuse of Charles both at his estate and on a yacht trip in Mallorca, Spain where they wed and a humbled Charles changes his will to leave all his fortune to Maria, leaving only 40,000 pounds to his nephew.

After his uncle's death at the yacht one morning, both Anthony and Maria concoct a scheme to pretend he is still living as they return to the estate. Maria later becomes a murder suspect after admitting their scheme to the detectives, and later discovers that Anthony murdered his own Uncle with Barbiturate poison, and purposely misled Maria about Charles last will and testimony in order to trap her into the crime alone while he ulteriorly inherits the money after her conviction.

Detective Lomer and Negroid servant Thomas later revealed a tape recording by Charles at his deathbed, exposing Anthony of the murder and tries to escape. The servant Thomas pushes the wheelchair of Charles towards Anthony, who falls into his death on the grand staircase while a vengeful ghostly wheelchair overlooks Anthony, now dead. Maria regains justice and is found to be innocent by the court, inheriting the estate and fortune of Charles and the film ends with credits.

The character of Lollobrigida' refers to the Woman of Straw of the title.

Cast

Production

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios, Audley End House in Saffron Walden, Essex and in Majorca in the Balearic Islands between August and October 1963. The Majorca footage, including much footage in a boat off the coast, was shot on location in September 1963. Gina Lollobrigida was reportedly "demanding and temperamental" during the filming, frequently clashing with Connery and Dearden.

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "With three accomplished performers, a well-handled supporting cast (led by the ever-reliable Alexander Knox), with palatial settings and a harmonious sense of colour, this run-of-the-mill melodrama could hardly fail to offer a mild thrill or two. Richardson has the eyes to penetrate one's nerve when the dark glasses of a dead man slip; and Sean Connery turns up a contemporary-type Hamlet, sneer, sable and all, capable of showing any of his prototypes how to deal with the cowardice of conscience. But this type of script needs a flamboyant sense of dramatic symbolism to bring it to life – a towering Wellesian view of a lift climbing slowly past arches and chandeliers, a more shattering use of the visual imagery of polished cars such as Losey can make, a touch of Hitchcock to sharpen suspense and turn the howl of a dog into something inhuman instead of noises off. Any film of such glamorous pretensions cannot fail to evoke memories of what can be done with similar material. Even Beethoven echoing from yacht to shore fails to carry the titanic irony of Richmond's necromantic homecoming, and the reason lies, as so often in British films, in a reluctant approach to the theme."

In The New York Times, Eugene Archer wrote, "what could be more archaic than the sight of James Bond himself, Sean Connery, stalking glumly through the very type of old-fashioned thriller he usually mocks? That is exactly what we have in "Woman of Straw," and you can be certain that Mr. Connery did not look one bit more unhappy than yesterday's audience at the Criterion, where the hapless British film crept into town. For, despite the fancy trappings laid on by the respected old producer-director team of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden, this handsomely colored exercise is the kind of pseudo-Victorian nonsense that Alfred Hitchcock long ago laid to rest".

References

  1. "Move Towards Bigger Budget Films". Variety. 27 November 1963. p. 19.
  2. "Woman of Straw". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 19 August 2024.
  3. "Woman of Straw (1964)". Archived from the original on 16 December 2017.
  4. Goble, Alan (1 January 1999). The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110951943 – via Google Books.
  5. ^ Burton, Alan; O'Sullivan, Tim (2009). The Cinema of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph. Edinburgh University Press. p. 290. doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632893.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-7486-3289-3. S2CID 193528676.
  6. "Woman of Straw". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 31 (360): 94. 1 January 1964 – via ProQuest.
  7. Archer, Eugene (1 October 1964). "Gina Lollobrigida Stars in 'Woman of Straw'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 17 April 2020.

External links

Films directed by Basil Dearden
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