File On Thelma Jordon, The (1950)

[cigar joe]

Director Robert Sidomak, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, and Paul Kelly. This film has been off the radar for most Noir fans and after seeing Sidomak's The Phantom Lady, Christmas Holiday, The Killers, Cry of the City, and Criss Cross, I had high hopes. I sort of thought in the back of my mind that he was on a roll and discounted The Spiral Staircase as an aberration since it didn't quite fit the right "noir" time period much like Gaslight, The Tall Target and The Strange Woman definitely noir in style but some how off.

The File on Thelma Johnson is sort of a "Noir Light", no dark back streets, no sleaze, light on atmosphere. Its entertaining enough but not, in my opinion, in the same class as Sidomak's other Noirs.

This IMDb poster critiques it pretty spot on:

Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico, USA
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Not entirely without interest, this is a rather dark story of Wendell Corey, an Assistant D.A. alienated from his wife and two children, who bumps into Barbara Stanwyck by accident and falls for her. They have a secret affair. Then Stanwyck's wealthy old auntie is shot and killed during a burglary and the evidence all points to Stanwyck, who is brought to trial. It seems like an easy case for the D.A.'s office except that the records show that Stanwyck has been receiving phone calls from a man who continually identifies himself by different names. Corey's boss, Paul Kelly, calls him "Mister X", and worries that the defense may introduce reasonable doubt using Mister X as the fomenter.

Now, Corey is in an uncomfortable position, to say the least. He's assigned to try the case, convict his lover, and send her to the gas chamber. But he has all kinds of problems. Not only is he devoted to her, not only is HE the mysterious Mister X, but he believes Stanwyck when she tells him she's innocent. He winds up sending her notes, advising her on who to hire as defense counsel, and he sends her five thousand bucks to manage expenses. Corey also decides to bungle the case in as nuanced a way as possible.

I ask you, the experienced viewer of old black-and-white crime dramas, is she innocent or is she setting up Corey as the fall guy? Stanwyck is set free. And Corey discovers there is another man in the picture. There have probably been OTHER men, as well. If he is Mister X, there was first a Mister A, then a Mister B, and then .... Mister n. (That's the way you denote a finite string of variables of unknown length in statistics.) Stanwyck spills the beans to Corey. This is known as "cooling out the mark". But she does a very clumsy job of it, leaving Corey in a state of humiliation and despair. Stanwyck has shown no remorse so far. But as she is driving away towards a new life with her Greaseball boyfriend behind the wheel, she decides to coagulate his eyeball with the car's red-hot cigarette lighter and, well, there is a fiery plunge off a cliff, and she winds up dying on a hospital bed. After she makes her final confession to Paul Kelly, she passes away peacefully, the vehicular catastrophe not having disfigured her in any way, her hair and make up impeccably done. Not even her false eyelashes have been disturbed.

This movie must have been made after "Double Indemnity" because it follows the same trajectory, more or less. I much prefer the original, or even the remake, of "Double Indemnity," but this isn't an insulting copy, only a less original one.

A couple of things to add, it wasn't quite believable that Stanwyck would really fall for Corey as portrayed when he is on his "bender", perhaps its a mark of the times and how we look at drunks nowadays, but she seemed way too accommodating upon this first viewing. Add that there was no chemistry doesn't help.

The first meeting between Stanwyck & drunk Corey



Corey passed out in a restaurant



Stanwyck's Aunt in a noir-ish sequence



Stanwyck & the cigarette lighter in a moving vehicle



I'll give it a 6.5/10.

[MartinTeller]

[review from November 13, 2010]

An assistant D.A. has an affair, but a murder complicates things. I had unreasonably high hopes for this one. With Barbara Stanwyck and Wendell Corey as the leads (and in the same year as The Furies!) and Siodmak in the director's chair, it seemed like a safe bet. And it's... good. Stanwyck and Corey are both fantastic, the story unfolds nicely, there's some good dialogue and standard noir staples, and there's a couple of outstanding scenes. But only a couple, and that's the problem. All of it is at least mildly interesting, but there's only a few points where it really gets exciting. And it's kind of retread of Double Indemnity, uncomfortably so in some ways. There's even a photo of Stanwyck wearing a similar gaudy blonde wig... perhaps as a wink and/or a tribute, but it certainly doesn't help distance this film from its predecessor. Fun to watch, mostly because of the two terrific leads, just don't expect to be blown away by it. Rating: 7

[Steve-O]

THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON (1950)—Posted by Carl (3/27/06)

Director Robert Siodmak completed his amazing run of American noir classics with this underrated and currently grossly ignored gem. The File on Thelma Jordon isn’t a classic on the level of The Killers or Criss Cross but it’s way too close to be gathering dust in Paramount’s vaults largely unviewed, having never been released on either VHS or DVD to the general public. Worse yet, the film used to get regular airings back in the days when AMC was a legitimate, respectable classic film vehicle but it has completely disappeared from sight in recent years. This is the lamentable shame for many excellent Paramount noirs, but Thelma Jordon just might top the list of the ones that merit mass-market rediscovery, at least among classic film connoisseurs.



If nothing else, it stars the legendary Barbara Stanwyck in one of her greatest roles, noir or otherwise. Stanwyck plays a nuanced version of Double Indemnity’s Phyllis Dietrichson, a femme fatale who becomes emotionally conflicted when she seduces assistant D.A. Cleve Marshall for the purposes of committing a crime and then proceeds to fall in love with him. Marshall, played by the underappreciated and underutilized Wendell Corey, is to his character what Stanwyck is to hers, a more sympathetic and complicated Walter Neff. The film’s obvious parallels with D.I. make it a most compelling watch, and it makes you wonder why these two movies aren’t coupled together at more noir festivals, particularly with Stanwyck as such a fascinating link between the two.

Quick plot summary: Marshall is celebrating the anniversary of his struggling marriage by getting drunk after working hours in the deserted office of his investigator pal Miles Scott, who has just left the building. Stanwyck subsequently arrives unannounced to report a series of burglary attempts at her rich aunt’s mansion. It’s unclear whether the investigator (played by Paul Kelly) was supposed to be the original fall guy, but after a long conversation with the increasingly inebriated Cleve that carries on in a bar til closing time, Thelma (apparently) decides he’ll do as the dupe in the jewel robbery Stanwyck is organizing (again, apparently) with her old boyfriend and card-carrying hood Tony Laredo.

Siodmak’s strategy in developing the first half of the film may be its greatest strength but possibly its greatest failure as well. The film is very measured for its first 30-40 minutes as the director goes to great lengths to develop the film’s characters and their conflicts. Cleve obviously still loves his wife as he’s falling for Thelma but can’t stand his overbearing, meddling father-in-law and her subservience to him. Thelma, on the other hand, has even more subtle emotions tugging at her. She feels sorry for Cleve but is also strangely attracted to his intelligence and noble character, seeing the real man even in his most drunken state. They carry on an affair that is genuine and heartfelt, even as a sinister plot is about unfold.

The slow early, talky pace surely must have been off-putting to audiences expecting action in 1950 … the same might hold for people who view it today if they aren’t prepared for it. But patience is rewarded for the experienced film viewer who isn’t as concerned about flying bullets and instant gratification.

Midway through the movie comes its literal Big Bang – the rich aunt is shot in the dark of night and robbed of her precious jewels. At least to the viewer, it’s unclear who did it at first, Thelma or Tony. But when it becomes obvious to Cleve that she will be implicated as the prime suspect, he helps her cover up the evidence out of his love for her and concocts a mad scenario involving a mysterious Mr X. When she is arrested and charged for the murder, Cleve then arranges to have the D.A. thrown off the case on a technicality and prosecutes the case himself, going to great lengths to purposely bungle it in order to get Thelma acquitted.

Thelma ultimately does get off but she can’t bring herself to reconcile with Cleve after what she has done to him, and when Tony turns up to cash in on the aunt’s inheritance, she decides to leave town with the creep. The film’s climax is a complete shocker and shouldn’t be disclosed first-time viewers, so I won’t even drop any hints here.

In the denouement, Stanwyck’s final scene has been described as melodramatic and somewhat corny, and there’s definitely something to that, but who can play those scenes better than Barb? The real key is Cleve, who must somehow put together the shambles of his life and career. The movie ends as it began, with Cleve as a conflicted soul not sure where he’s headed as he strolls off into the dark night. But you get the distinct impression he’d do it all over again just to reclaim the passion he discovered with Thelma. Good finish to a good movie.

The magnificent acting of Stanwyck and Corey carry ``The File On Thelma Jordon’’ a long, long way. In less capable hands, this one might have been a dog because no one could have made it through those first 30-40 minutes of subtle buildup while Siodmak slowly stripped away layers of the initially ambiguous plot and the characters’ idiosyncracies. Stanwyck and Corey are allowed to really build their affair and give it dimension and credence, albeit in a completely different way than Phyllis and Walter in Double Indemnity.

The two leads are well supported, primarily by Richard Rober as Tony (who eerily died in a car crash just a couple of years after this movie was made). The always wonderful Kelly is solid even though he is delivered an unspectacular part, and Stanley Ridges is excellent as the famous defense attorney Kingsley Willis. Ridges, too, died within two years of this movie’s release. An interesting bit part is the aunt, played by Gertrude Hoffman, that most memorable matronly inmate in Caged.

The film is shot in dark hues throughout by George Barnes, one of the cinematography pioneers of the silent age. He didn’t venture much into noir, but was director of photography for Force of Evil and Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Spellbound. He died in 1953.

Why Siodmak abandoned noir (and America) shortly after this film is something of a mystery. What has been documented is that with the classic noir cycle already starting to wither a bit, Siodmak was viewed as someone who had lost something on his filmmaking fastball, and that ``Thelma Jordon’’ was far too stylized and deliberate to be a box-office hit. Without question, it’s not a noir film for those who like large doses of action. But its structure, style, story and dialogue deliver most successfully for many noir viewers who understand and appreciate its depth of development. It certainly does the job for me. For the Double Indemnity comparisons alone, it deserves a much, much, much larger audience. If you’ve never seen it, definitely check it out before the Noir of the Year voting for 1950.

carl



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