Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Pluskylang Great Film overall

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

seymourblack-1 Generally regarded as director Nicholas Ray's least successful movie, "A Woman's Secret" is based on the novel "Mortgage on Life" by Vicki Baum and tells the story of an investigation into the near-fatal shooting of a well-known young singer. What transpired before the shooting is revealed through a series of flashbacks with some pieces of information proving to be more reliable than others and very little being discovered which could explain why the victim's mentor so readily confessed to the crime.Following one of her radio broadcasts, popular singer Susan Caldwell (Gloria Grahame), who's known professionally as Estrellita, returns to the apartment she shares with her mentor Marian Washburn (Maureen O'Hara) and announces that she intends to give up her singing career. This leads to a very animated quarrel, a physical struggle and a gun being fired that leaves Susan critically injured before Marian, very calmly and without hesitation, calls for medical help and reports the incident to the police.Police Inspector Jim Fowler (Jay C Flippen) leads the investigation and Marian's business partner Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas) hires attorney Brook Matthews (Victor Jory) to defend her. Jordan, who believes implicitly in Marian's innocence, explains to Fowler that she'd enjoyed a successful career as a singer before having contracted a throat ailment that damaged her voice and led to her retirement. Some time later, they had jointly "discovered" Susan and steered her to success but despite this she'd remained as unsophisticated and unstable as she'd been when they first knew her and didn't appreciate the value of her new career. Susan's attitude frustrated and irritated Marian who'd invested so much of her time and effort into coaching her protégée. Would this have fully explained why Marian was so desperate to prevent Susan from giving up her career or was there more to their relationship than meets the eye? "A Woman's Secret" begins well and remains intriguing through most of its running time but unfortunately leads to a conclusion that disappoints. No doubt, this is the main reason why the movie was a commercial flop and still remains so unappreciated many years after its first release. Despite this, however, it's not entirely without merit because there are some good performances (particularly from Gloria Grahame, Jay C Flippen and Melvyn Douglas), some enjoyable humour and amusing dialogue (e.g. when Jordan describes Susan as having "a voice with hormones"). The flashback structure also creates an impression of more substance than would have been the case if the drama had simply been presented in linear form.Interestingly, during the making of this movie, another drama was being played out behind the cameras, as Nicholas Ray and Gloria Grahame had an affair which led to their unsuccessful marriage and divorce. This had been Grahame's second marriage and after her third one also ended in divorce, she subsequently married Ray's son, Anthony in 1960.

patrick powell Compared to what we are presented with today in the cinema, A Woman's Secret and many films of that era are quaint antedeluvian oddities, and it would be easy to poke fun at them. But we should remember that there are a great many films of the time, for whatever reason, have stood the test of time and then some, that tastes change and what might now seem ludicrous was just what movie-goers wanted at the time, and finally that far more versatile technology has allowed our modern directors to put on screen which Nick Ray in 1949 could only have dreamed off. Having said all that, A Woman's Secret was pretty tacky even according to its contemporary standards.It is, at the end of the day, nothing more than a pretty mediocre potboiler. The story is daft, it can't make up its mind whether to be a noir or just a lighthearted drama, and the introduction of the police inspector's amateur sleuth wife is nothing short of bizarre. It didn't score for me at all.

Aaron Igay I had high hopes for this film. The screenplay is by Herman J Mankiewicz of 'Citizen Kane' fame and it's directed by Nicholas Ray and features actress Gloria Grahame. Ray also directed one of my favorite films 'In A Lonely Place' in which Grahame also starred. The great side-story on the film here is how the two of them met on the set and zipped off to Vegas so that Grahame could get a quickie divorce from her then husband and marry Ray. Maybe they should have focused on making this a watchable film instead of cooing over each other. Like most noirs this had tons of flashbacks, but generally in other movies they are used to reveal surprising clues, here they are a gimmick to tell every irrelevant detail of somebody's life which we could care less about. Avoid this film and watch 'In a Lonely Place' instead.

dougdoepke No need to recap the plot, which I couldn't do anyway. In fact, just what the screenplay is aiming at may be the movie's biggest secret. Is it a mystery—well no, since early on the camera shows Marian (O'Hara) pulling the trigger. Is it a noir—hardly, since the atmosphere is pretty conventional. Is it a love story (a Ray specialty)—well maybe, except who loves whom is not always clear. Sure, a movie doesn't have to be pigeon-holed to be good. But the trouble here is that Secret is simply too muddled to fit anywhere, and that's despite a luminescent turn from the incomparable Gloria Grahame.Director Ray was especially expert at getting triumphs from love story actresses—Cathy O'Donnell, Allene Roberts, Natalie Wood, et al. No wonder Grahame fell for him in real life. However, critics are right: Jory and Douglas are both a shade too old (circa, 50) for 20-something O'Hara and Grahame. Plus, pity poor Bill Williams whose one-note, unnecessary part suggests he wandered onto the wrong set. Then there's the ill- advised comedy relief from the cop's wife that erupts half-way through as if some studio higher-up suddenly intervened.Hard to believe cult director Ray had anything to do with this muddle. Clearly, he only went through the motions, probably as a result of an unwanted studio assignment (RKO). Too bad. But, I doubt anyone could have salvaged such confused material.