Woman Obsessed
The 1959 film's title misleads. It sounds noirish, a vengeance picture, maybe, but it also suggests melodrama. It is that, but the location and subject matter surprises: Saskatchewan, a married couple and their young son, a forest fire killing the husband--a volunteer firefighter--and the husband's friend who takes a job helping on their small farm. Not a city story, as the theme of obsession might imply.
After the grief subsides, Mary Sharron (Susan Hayward) becomes more and more attracted to the helper, Fred Carter (Stephen Boyd, in the same year he famously starred in Ben-Hur). Fred digs her, too, and likes her son, Robbie (Dennis Holmes), that is, until the boy faints at the sight of a deer's blood after refusing to learn how to dress it. Robbie is hypersensitive about death, about animals suffering. Fred can't understand this--he also has a chip on his shoulder. Six years before, his wife died, partly because his friend failed to be of use in an emergency. Robbie's squeamishness reminds Fred of this. He gets really mad.
Mary shields the boy, "smothers him." By this point she and Fred are married. He hits her as she defends Robbie. Later he evidently rapes her in their bedroom. She gets pregnant but conceals this from Fred.
He gets the silent treatment. Robbie avoids him on sight as much as possible. Robbie even tries to get up the nerve to hurl a pitchfork at Fred, who eggs him on, wanting the boy to show some spine. The usual male bullshit dynamics are readily believed in by Fred, whose ideas are countered by kindly Doctor Gibbs (Theodore Bikel), the man serving as Mary's confidant. Gibbs also reveals to Mary her second husband's back story, causing her to relent somewhat, especially after Fred locates a missing Robbie in the woods after a thunderstorm swells the river, knocking out bridges. Robbie helps Fred out of a mud bog, saving his life. The two become close thereafter; Fred is still thinking of leaving the farm, giving Mary a divorce and her space, but she ends up in his arms at the end.
Susan Hayward often acted in "women's stories," playing people beset with circumstances unique to the female experience of life. Consequently, she was allowed to explore women's issues through her characters. In Woman Obsessed, she offers a portrait of a woman in a very difficult situation, losing her husband in a forest fire, stuck with having to do a farm job mostly by herself until she's helped by Fred, who works out fine at first, but becomes a threat to her bond with her son. She naturally chooses Robbie over Fred in this battle but then has to live with the tension generated by her new husband's frustration, a crucible for domestic violence: yet another set of difficulties she endures.
She's then in a position of getting pregnant again, with an unwanted child conceived through sexual violation. Who stands up in society for women in these kinds of dilemmas in 1959, or in 2019?
Susan Hayward thus bravely performed in many films depicting women undergoing the kinds of life struggles not much dealt with in classic Hollywood films, where actresses were often ornaments subordinate to male leads shown as "having all the answers."
It's not a bad movie, though it's predictable. The scenery (Sierra Nevada Mountains of California rather than Saskatchewan) is beautiful, Hayward and Boyd are both good, as is Dennis Holmes as Robbie. Henry Hathaway, a veteran filmmaker of five decades, directed the movie.
Vic Neptune
The 1959 film's title misleads. It sounds noirish, a vengeance picture, maybe, but it also suggests melodrama. It is that, but the location and subject matter surprises: Saskatchewan, a married couple and their young son, a forest fire killing the husband--a volunteer firefighter--and the husband's friend who takes a job helping on their small farm. Not a city story, as the theme of obsession might imply.
After the grief subsides, Mary Sharron (Susan Hayward) becomes more and more attracted to the helper, Fred Carter (Stephen Boyd, in the same year he famously starred in Ben-Hur). Fred digs her, too, and likes her son, Robbie (Dennis Holmes), that is, until the boy faints at the sight of a deer's blood after refusing to learn how to dress it. Robbie is hypersensitive about death, about animals suffering. Fred can't understand this--he also has a chip on his shoulder. Six years before, his wife died, partly because his friend failed to be of use in an emergency. Robbie's squeamishness reminds Fred of this. He gets really mad.
Mary shields the boy, "smothers him." By this point she and Fred are married. He hits her as she defends Robbie. Later he evidently rapes her in their bedroom. She gets pregnant but conceals this from Fred.
He gets the silent treatment. Robbie avoids him on sight as much as possible. Robbie even tries to get up the nerve to hurl a pitchfork at Fred, who eggs him on, wanting the boy to show some spine. The usual male bullshit dynamics are readily believed in by Fred, whose ideas are countered by kindly Doctor Gibbs (Theodore Bikel), the man serving as Mary's confidant. Gibbs also reveals to Mary her second husband's back story, causing her to relent somewhat, especially after Fred locates a missing Robbie in the woods after a thunderstorm swells the river, knocking out bridges. Robbie helps Fred out of a mud bog, saving his life. The two become close thereafter; Fred is still thinking of leaving the farm, giving Mary a divorce and her space, but she ends up in his arms at the end.
Susan Hayward often acted in "women's stories," playing people beset with circumstances unique to the female experience of life. Consequently, she was allowed to explore women's issues through her characters. In Woman Obsessed, she offers a portrait of a woman in a very difficult situation, losing her husband in a forest fire, stuck with having to do a farm job mostly by herself until she's helped by Fred, who works out fine at first, but becomes a threat to her bond with her son. She naturally chooses Robbie over Fred in this battle but then has to live with the tension generated by her new husband's frustration, a crucible for domestic violence: yet another set of difficulties she endures.
She's then in a position of getting pregnant again, with an unwanted child conceived through sexual violation. Who stands up in society for women in these kinds of dilemmas in 1959, or in 2019?
Susan Hayward thus bravely performed in many films depicting women undergoing the kinds of life struggles not much dealt with in classic Hollywood films, where actresses were often ornaments subordinate to male leads shown as "having all the answers."
It's not a bad movie, though it's predictable. The scenery (Sierra Nevada Mountains of California rather than Saskatchewan) is beautiful, Hayward and Boyd are both good, as is Dennis Holmes as Robbie. Henry Hathaway, a veteran filmmaker of five decades, directed the movie.
Vic Neptune
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