2005-07-18 - 23:11

The Second Woman.

Last night I saw the most amazing movie. It was in the film noir box set and it was called “The Second Woman.” It wasn’t particularly well put together. From that stand point, it was bloody perfect because of I was trying to relax and prepare for a good night of sleep. Since it wasn't a well constructed narrative, I felt I could close my eyes because anything that would be important would be big and obvious. This turned out not to be the point, but that's neither here nor there. In the movie, Betsy Drake plays a woman named Ellen who is going to visit her aunt. Ellen, we find out is an actuarial scientist who works for an insurance company and computes charts on the likelihood of accidents. Ellen meets her aunt’s neighbor, a reclusive, sort-of widower (his fiancee died the night before their wedding in a terrible car accident). who, since the accident has had a string of really unfortunate luck. The sort of unfortunate luck that an actuarial scientist would see as more than just bad luck.

Its clear they like each other and they try to hook up but it doesn’t really happen because he wants to protect her from the bad luck. Also, it would appear that he's either mooning over a dead girl. Ellen wants to prove to him that its more than just bad luck, that someone is fucking with him and that he should take it seriously. Its great. She computes probabilities and chases down leads. She's got her eyes and her ears open and she tells a skeez ball to shove it. There is a subplot involving the father-in-law and the family business and the business manager and his ex-wife. (1951 and divorced. Nice.) It began with a flashback in an attempt to establish suspense. The performances didn't really do justice to the subtlety of the writing. You really had to work to get the importance of the relationship of the dead girl's father and the reclusive sort-of widower. The bits involving the ex-wife were pretty funny, though. She was in on things she wished she wasn't, and her reactions to things hint to the big secret that everything hinges on. In the end it was pretense and lying to protect and that juxtaposition between what we want people to think we are and what we are. Gotta love noir.

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Artificial Sound for the Artificial World: What does 'woman' mean? a mix CD.

Still more noir than you are.