The Woman Condemned

1934 "Her tale was a maze of madness and murder!"
4.3| 1h6m| en| More Info
Released: 03 April 1934 Released
Producted By: Willis Kent Productions
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

When a radio star is found murdered in her home, everyone assumes that the mysterious young woman discovered with her is the culprit — everyone, that is, but newspaper reporter Jerry Beall, who sets out to prove her innocence.

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Reviews

Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!
Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Phillida Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
classicsoncall Well now, here's the thing - for this movie to work, you'll have to accept the following - a woman who's murdered is alive again at the end of the movie, a detective stops interrogating the dead woman's fiancée because a newspaper reporter asked him not to, and that same reporter, smitten by a good looking blonde hauled into night court for suspicious behavior, winds up getting married to her in exchange for the judge letting her off the hook. Are you following me on this? I can't tell you how many times I paused and rewound the picture to repeat scenes that just didn't make any sense. In the end, the blonde (Claudia Dell) and the reporter (Richard Hemingway) remained married, but I have no idea how they came to that decision. In fact, I can't figure out how the film maker came to the decision to make this flick. Oh I suppose there's some entertainment value here for just the sheer nonsense of it all, but it would have been nice if even a couple of the pieces fit. Still, I'm not ready to add this one to my Top Ten Worst list. I think that night club scene with the feathered ladies might have saved it. But why was it in the movie? I just don't know.
kidboots Another point of interest is that it is directed by Mrs. Wallace Reid. After her husband's death she turned her hand to writing, producing, directing and acting. She only directed a few films and this, unfortunately, was the last. The star, Claudia Dell was a blonde beauty, who came to films with "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" (1930) but by 1931, she was already playing second female supporting parts. This film gave her a chance to play the lead.Jane Merrick (Lola Lane), sweetheart of the air, gives her farewell performance. She is frightened and after some cryptic phone calls to a menacing man (Mischa Auer) you get the feeling she is being black- mailed. Jim Wallace (Jason Robards) who cares for her, goes to a private detective agency to hire someone to keep an eye on her.The most novel part of the film is having a female investigator - although she isn't that good. Claudia Dell plays Barbara Hammond, who is caught trying to break into an apartment and is taken to night court. One of the reporters, Jerry (Richard Hemingway), is taken by her prettiness and concocts a story that she is his fiancée and is always playing practical jokes. The judge lets her off - but marries them before they leave!!! Barbara is hot on Jane's trail when she is arrested for Jane's murder!!! She seems to have secrets as well and refuses all help from her well meaning husband. A phone number leads Jerry to Dr. Wagner's private sanatorium - specializing in plastic surgery!!! Mischa Auer is the plastic surgeon, who says he was hired by Jane Merrick to remove a birth mark from her face.I found it enjoyable, if a bit fantastic. If Jane was in hospital - who was the dead person that Barbara found???? Who knows???Richard Hemingway's claim to fame is that he was once married to Irene Bentley - an actress more mysterious than Garbo!!!
JohnHowardReid I won't even try to provide a synopsis of the story. This is one of those mystery thrillers in which everything is thrown into the pot to make the story as intriguingly attention-grabbing as possible. And then having propounded a successfully unusual and highly suspenseful set of situations, the writers throw creativity to the wind in the last five minutes by solving the mystery in some clichéd manner that leaves the most purblind audience breathless with anger and disappointment. At least the elaborately constructed plot doesn't all turn out to be a dream, but the device used here is almost as hackneyed and almost equally a letdown.Nonetheless, by the extremely humble standard of Willis Kent bottom-of-the-rung-even-for-Poverty-Row productions, this movie is certainly a cut above the average "Z"-grader. It was the last film directed by Mrs Wallace Reid who has tried very hard (and very successfully) to create atmosphere and production values on an extremely meager budget. Given the sort of studio support and largess that Dorothy Arzner worked with, Mrs Reid would undoubtedly have done equally well, if not better. Yet feminists give all their attention to Arzner and none at all to Mrs Reid. Even the Arzner biography in IMDb claims that Arzner "was the only woman director during the Golden Age of Hollywood's studio system during the 1920s and 1930s." (Other Davenport films presently available are The Road to Ruin and Sucker Money).A major virtue of The Woman Condemned must be the fine performances provided by every member of the cast from charmingly charismatic hero Richard C. Hemingway (who never got anywhere), poorly photographed Claudia Dell (who had the shortest career as a major star on record — less than a year) and one-song Lola Lane, through to Neal Pratt's nice cameo as a sarcastic judge
Hitchcoc This is about a woman who is killed (sort of). Other forces move in and people are set up. Now if the woman didn't die, what are the charges, or are there charges? Or are they trying to prove someone is up to no good for past acts. Let's see. People are being operated on. People look in windows. I don't know why? Who's on first? What's on second. There is a romance brewing. If I'd been that guy, I would have dropped that woman after the twelfth time she lied to him. I can't spoil the ending because I'm not sure what the ending was. Suffice it to say, there are lucid periods in the film, but the milieu is so cluttered and there are so many red herrings launched, it goes all over the place.