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Sunday, February 7th, 2010
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Barbara Graham was a known prostitute with criminal associates. In the early 1950s, Graham and two men were accused of and arrested for the brutal slay of elderly Mable Monahan during the course of a robbery. Convicted and sentenced to death in California’s gas chamber, Graham protested her innocence to the end–and many considered that she was less a criminal than a victim of circumstance and that she had been railroaded to conviction and execution. The famed 1958 film I WANT TO LIVE follows this point of concept, presenting Graham as a thoroughly tough gal who in spite of her background was essentially more sinned against than sinner, and the result is an extremely intense, interesting film that shakes its viewers to the core.
The film has a stark, realistic glance, an pleasant script, a pounding jazz salvage, and a strong supporting cast–but it is Susan Hayward’s legendary performance that makes the film work. She gives us a Graham who is half gun moll, half obliging time girl, and tough as nails all the map through–but who is nonetheless likeable, perhaps even admirable in her flat rebellion against a sickeningly hypocritical and repulsively white-bread society. Although Hayward seems slightly artificial in the film’s opening scenes, she like a flash rises to the challenge of the role and gives an explosive performance as primary for its emotional hysteria as for its touching humanity.
As the sage moves toward its climax, the detail with which director Wise shows preparations for execution in the gas chamber and the intensity of Hayward’s performance add up to one of the most remarkable sequences in film history. Ironically, Hayward privately stated that her gain research led her to possess that Graham was guilty as sin–and today most people who have studied the case tend to gain that Graham was guilty indeed. But whether the real-life Barbara Graham was innocent or guilty, this is a film that delivers one memorable, jolting, and very, very disturbing bound. Strongly recommended, but not for the faint of heart.
Susan Hayward made no bones about her career goals. She had arrive to Hollywood in the tedious 1930’s not to become “honest” an Actress, but a Star. It took a few hard years of playing supporting roles and minor leads, but eventually her talent and determination won out, and she broke through the ranks and achieved her goal. Having reached the top, she dwelling her sights even higher, stating clearly that she was focused on winning an Academy Award. Her first nomination came in 1947 for the hard-hitting drama “Smash-Up: The Legend of a Woman”, but she lost to Loretta Young in “The Farmer’s Daughter”. Hayward would rack up three more nominations (for “My Foolish Heart” in 1949; “With a Song In My Heart” in 1952; and “I’ll Sob Tomorrow” in 1955) before she finally hit Oscar paydirt in 1958 with “I Want to Live!”
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“I Want to Live!” tells the narrative of Barbara Graham, a wild party girl with a rap sheet a mile long who was convicted of slay in the early 1950’s and executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Penitentiary. The script whitewashes Graham’s myth, painting her as a more sympathetic character (i.e., “innocent”) than she had been in exact life, but Hayward comes through with a gutsy tour de force performance that provides the film with impartial the just amount of gritty toughness that elevates it out of the league of soap opera. Her Barbara Graham may be a “victim” of circumstances and a flawed moral system, but she is also loud, outrageous, vulgar, flippant, and antisocial, often working against her hold best interests. And Hayward never hits a fake designate, provoking the audience to a odd mixture of contempt and compassion, repulsion and attraction. By the final scenes of the film, when Graham is at San Quentin with execution imminent, Hayward is able to gear down and underplay; she’s done such a masterful job with her character thus far that the audience feels - and doesn’t really need to search for or hear - the turmoil within Graham as she resigns herself to her inevitable fate. It’s a bravura share of acting, and Hayward richly deserved the Oscar she won.
The DVD is amazingly distinct and appealing. The gloomy and white cinematography is brilliant; the shadows in some of the San Quentin sequences - especially those in which the death chamber is readied - are startling. And the film-to-video transfer is flawless; watching on a big cloak TV, I could actually glimpse the freckles on Miss Hayward’s collarbone and clarify the ridges on her fingernails in some of the final closeup shots. Happily, the New Theatrical Trailer is included on the disc; what a shocker it must have been to movie-goers at the time since it includes the notorious scene of Hayward being led abet to her prison cell repeatedly screaming the profanity that Rhett Butler almost didn’t collect to negate on mask less than 20 years earlier! Definitely a must-have DVD for fans of big camouflage acting …
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