Black Widow (1954) with Ginger Rogers and Van Heflin

One of them will kill her tonight! and your guess is as good as ours!
Cinemascope makes everything better, right? Well, just about- even when it’s more or less wasted on a film like 1954’s Black Widow, a film surely pushed into widescreen only in an attempt to push back against television.

But don’t take that to mean that Black Widow is a bad film, because it isn’t. It just doesn’t have the sweeping exteriors that really shine in Cinemascope. Rather, it is almost exclusively apartment bound, which gives the film a false feel of airiness.

The cast is quite good, featuring Ginger Rogers as a Broadway Diva and Van Heflin (as her producer) and Gene Tierney as a married couple who also have an apartment in the same building as Rogers. Rounding things out are stalwart George Raft as a good gumshoe and Peggy Ann Garner as Nanny Ordway, an erstwhile actor turned writer.

Gumshoe probably gave it away, but there’s a mystery to be solved here. And though it’s not exactly rocket science to figure it out ahead of time, it is better than many similar films have to offer.

Van Heflin is Peter Denver, who in my opinion is usually about as engaging as Wonder Bread, actually shows up here as a Broadway producer. While at a party given by his star Carlotta (Ginger Rogers) he befriends Nanny Ordway (Garner) a struggling actress whose real aspiration is to be a writer. For whatever half-baked reason, he not only takes her to dinner afterwards but invites her to use his apartment as a writing studio. He tells his wife (Gene Tierney) all about it- which I guess makes it okay. She’s on a trip to see her ailing mother, after all.

Things go from odd to worse as Orway is found hanging in a back room on Iris’ (Tierney’s) return. It doesn’t look good for Peter and he ends up having to investigate his own case with the cops right on his trail. There are a few rather pleasing twists to the story before it all falls out. We won’t spill the beans but suffice to say Peter didn’t do it.

Van Heflin is strong, though his character is so straight and narrow it belies belief a bit that he’d be successful at all being so narrow. Van Heflin’s portrayal is earnest though and lends the proceedings a good bit of believability.

And although Van Heflin is much better than usual the real stars of the movie are Ginger Rogers and Peggy Ann Garner. Rogers is full of a poor imitation of condescension (in a role supposedly first offered to Tallulah Bankhead) and is magnetic on the screen. She’s also got the best writing of the entire cast behind her with a slew of one-liners.

Garner, though she just hangs around (bad pun) for some of the film, manages to makes big chunks of it her own. After her demise she returns in the form of flashbacks which actually work, unlike those in most films.

Among the women, the only downfall is Gene Tierney, who is just about completely wasted in an almost throwaway part. It was one of her final roles.

Though filmed in Cinemascope, Black Widow hovers mostly between two almost identical apartments with a few scenes on terraces thrown in presumably to break up the monotony. However, these same terraces are dressed with some amazingly poor models, even for the time. There’s not much life in those skyscrapers, shall we say.

Black Widow is well worth your while, just go into it with moderately tempered expectations. The cast alone is worth the price of admission.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0UBaux-ToM[/embedyt]