User Reviews

***SPOILERS***Classic Hugo Hass has the great Hass play movie director, very much like himself, Walter Darman who ends up getting blackmailed by this blond bimbo Sherry Steward, Cleo Moore, who failed a screen-test for his latest movie and was determined to ruin both his marriage as well as career as a film director. Tricking Darmer into spending an evening with her, after faking she was kidnapped,Sherry gets the tea toting Darman good and drunk and when he recovers, some 6 hours later, tells Darman that she had a sexual romp with him. Feeling responsible in a way of taking advantage of Sherry, what a laugh, Darman at first tries to make up for his actions by giving her bit parts in his movies. Only to have her and her sleazy boyfriend, a first class leach, Ronnie, Lance Fuller, put the squeeze on him demanding $50,000.00 or else let it be known to his wife Lucille, Lucille Blakley, that he knocked "Poor" Sherry up and left her and child to be born out in the cold.

It's soon dawns on Darman that this all was a set up by both Sherry and Ronnie to blackmail him and he soon develops plans on his own to even the score that leads to the tragic outcome, for everyone involved , in the movie. With Sherry confident that her and Ronnie's plan is working to perfection Darman short circuits it and turns the table on them at the expense of his own freedom. Something that the by now discredited Darman, as a big man in the film industry, was driven to do.

****SPOILERS**** Even though for a while it looked like he got away with murder, by strangling Sherry, Darman's human side soon kicked in when the studio custom designer Papasha, John Qualen, was arrested for the crime that he in fact committed. With Papasha, whom the late Sherry Steward set up as a pasty, forced to confess an possibly face the San Quentin gas chamber Darman finally came clean and admitted to the officer in charge of the murder case Police Inspector Collins, Jan Arvam, that he in fact murdered Sherry Steward which in fact Collins knew all along. Collins played a hunch that the guilt ridden Darman wouldn't let an innocent man pay for his crime and his hunch turned out to be right: Dead Right!

I wrote this unpublished review in 1971 when I was addressing the movies of Hugo Haas, seen by me over the years via TV syndication packages.

The ilm begins with Hugo shaking obviously phony prison bars -then we pan away and Hugo is talking to his assistants about how phony the bars look. They are making a movie and Hugo is the director.

It is interesting to note that the film was made just before Hugo Haas' "Hold Back Tomorrow" in which John Agar starred as a condemned prisoner -perhaps the same bars were used for that subsequent film. However, it is clear that "Hold Back" is not the film Hugo is making within "The Other Woman".

At the end of "The Other Woman", after Hugo has begun to confess his guilt, we fade into a scene just like the beginning of the film, with Hugo in closeup holding the prison bars. This is a marvelous, ingenious scene -this time the bars look real and Hugo remarks that they must have been polished to look real. He then comments, in a mood of consternation, on how could this have happened -it was just a movie! He then reiterates his producer's famous recipe for a hit movie: sex, violence and a happy ending. Then eyeing the camera, Hugo tells us that this time, there won't be any happy ending, and we suddenly go to black with Hugo peering at us.

This is a beautiful comment on Hugo's position as a commercial artist -his desire to make great films and the demands of the public and studios that must be heeded, and also the ambiguity of his position as director-actor-producer.

Especially important in "The Other Woman" is Hugo' constant reference to making a film. Several early scenes in which Hugo is directing a film are done extremely realistically, and it is interesting to ponder how similar the actual technicians making the larger film must be to the ones we see within the film.

Also important are the short scenes showing how a film is made, e.g., cutting, shooting of a hand-held expository document, giving direction to actors, etc. Hugo's arguing with his producer concerning artistry versus commercialism, pacing, artistic scenes and his own position as a transplanted Continental director is crucial to Hugo making his point about his own curious real-life position in cinema history If ever there was an auteur, we are seeing one here, since Hugo produced, wrote, directed, starred and even directed the film within a film in "The Other Woman".

Unlike many "film within a film" makers, Hugo successfully integrates the gimmick into his film's plot, and not only via the symmetric technique of the ambiguous shot of Hugo behind bars at film's beginning and end. Haas' crucial method of providing an alibi for murdering Cleo is to use the moviola (looping a bit of film) to convince his secretary that he has not left his office during the murder, thus giving himself an alibi. Also significant are the white gloves editors wear when working with a film in progress -these allow Hugo to avoid leaving fingerprints at the scene of the crime, but more importantly allow the audience to presume that he will be up to no good.

This film is rare in that while Hugo is the victim as usual (of blackmail) he initiates drastic action in killing Cleo and facing the consequences, whereas it is usually others who attempt to waste Hugo.

The movie begins with a director filming his last effort which takes place in jail and ends in the same cell ,so to speak ,whilst the unfortunate metteur en scène repeats his in-law's rules to make a bankable movie ;but he concludes : "unfortunately ,no happy end".

The follow-up to " strange fascination" , "the other woman " follows the same pattern : an artist (a director,a great pianist) , who's got a goodwill female help (a wife, a manager) and who falls prey to a pretty go-getter and her boyfriend.

The blonde (the habituée Cleo Moore) harasses ,blackmails and threatens the miserable director (Hugo Haas has a tendency to play more or less the same part since his very beginning in America -see "pick-up" (1951))till he is pushed to breaking point . Besides he is humiliated by his wealthy father-in-law who pushes him to make commercial movies .