Ladies They Talk About finds a perverse pleasure in luridly detailing the criminal capabilities of women Ñ whether its helping to hold up banks, grounding glass into a meal and then feeding it to someone, or as one character explains, “This little cream puff met a guy at a dinner one night and wanted to know what his name was, so she shot him and read it in the morning papers.” At the same time it tries to preserve “the sanctity of womanhood” Ñ the female prisoners all have distinct dresses, they sit around the jail in rocking chairs, and their rooms come complete with lace curtains, thick quilts, and a gramophone with which to listen to the latest jazz records. Neither image is highly realistic Ñ they’re both the product of male fantasies and romantic notions. It’s a similar binary as in Night Nurse, in which the women have to represent the apex of both “purity” and “impurity.”
Barbara Stanwyck is at her “tough broad” best in this movie. Sent up the river for her involvement in a bank robbery, she’s even more indignant to her fellow inmates than to the cops. When another prisoner hisses at her, “Say, there isn’t any punishment bad enough for you,” Stanwyck retorts as only a streetwise Brooklyn dame could, “Yeah, well being penned up here with a daffodil like you comes awful close.” The rest of the script is also playfully hardboiled: says another inmate about the woes of the prison yard, “Well, out here you’re a few feet from the two things you want most, but you’re always a few feet away: freedom and men.” Topping off an already absurd script is a dose of pure Hollywood surrealism: Ruth Donnelly as the prison matron, who patrols the ward with a large white parrot on her shoulder.
by Cullen Gallagher | Source: Turner Classic Movies Broadcast
14 Sep 2008 11:53 PM | Submit Comment
