Review of Don't Bother to Knock

I am no movie critic, but this film showed real depth from two of the most underrated actors in the business, and this was the golden age of "hollywood", the early 50's. Richard Widmark,who somehow later became almost a caricature of himself, as an edgy, slightly crazed character actor, is in this one an ultimately almost caring character. In this movie he just barely experiences an arc, but it is better than most of the roles they threw him later on. Who can forget the number of roles where his trademark evil cackle instantly typed his character? As for Marilyn Monroe, this movie really turned me around about her ability as an actress. Anyone who can look in her eyes in the later moments of this film and not see the depth of despair and disconnection there has just not lived enough to understand human nature and the vicissitudes of living in this world. If you can just suspend cynical disbelief for a couple of hours to watch this thing, she gives a heartbreaking performance that is completely believable, and those scars on her wrists are stigmata that may well belie her future. I think she was ultimately a truly tragic figure, an innocent(in her way)thoroughly corrupted by the system that made her a star. She was not the first and she will not be the last, but somehow, her fragility makes her the poster child for avoiding the star machine at all costs if you do not have the hide, and the mind, of a predator. In her last movie(I think) The Misfits, she projected the same kind of wounded innocence.