This moderately successful film noir was directed by Robert Stevenson, who is best known for his famous hit MARY POPPINS (1964). He also directed DISHONORED LADY (1947, see my review) and THE WOMAN ON PIER 13 ((1949, see my review), not to mention 59 other films. The film was billed as a kind of successor to THE THIRD MAN (1949, see my review) of the same year, simply because the same two leads were cast together, namely the alluring and fascinating Alida Valli and Joseph Cotten. But the magic is not there. Valli does her best, but Joseph Cotten seems tired, detached, and there is no chemistry between them this time. (Maybe they had ceased to get along?) So the producers were trying to build on the previous success of these two people, and with such clearly exploitative motives, such projects generally fail. When I was 16 years old, I knew Manny Seff, joint author of the story upon which the film was based. It was his last film. He was such an amusing, whimsical man who liked to make jokes. He was very good company, though rather quiet and unassertive in his manner. The film concerns a beautiful young woman, played by Valli, who has been paralysed because of a skiing accident and is confined to a wheelchair. She is naturally deeply depressed, and all the men who had been chasing her have lost their interest in her. Three years earlier, the film BEWARE OF PITY (1946), based on the famous novel by Stefan Zweig, had proved that a film about a beautiful young woman in a wheelchair (Lily Palmer in that instance) could be a commercial success. So the producers must have felt it was OK to put Valli in one, as all would be well. As far as Valli's part of the story went, all was well. She was wholly convincing and elicits our sympathy without demanding pity. But the rest of the film which swirls around her does not really work. Joseph Cotten is a very unsuitable candidate for playing a compulsive gambler and card shark, turned thief, who is on the run. That is just not 'him'. From the very beginning of the film, as we watch the calculating Cotten assume a false identity in Valli's home town, we just do not believe the film at all. His attempts to appear cold and calculating merely make him seem wrong for the part, which he was. Any man spending all that time with the beautiful Valli simply could not behave with such indifference to her obvious charms, especially when she keeps looking at him like that and tells him that she loves him. The film is ruined by being hopelessly unconvincing. Good try, shame about that.
Review of Walk Softly, Stranger
