★ 8 / 10
I never could resist anything that belonged to
John Chard
I never could resist anything that belonged to somebody else. The Wicked Lady is directed by Leslie Arliss and Arliss adapts the screenplay from Magdalen…
I never could resist anything that belonged to somebody else.
The Wicked Lady is directed by Leslie Arliss and Arliss adapts the screenplay from Magdalen King-Hall's novel. It stars Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie, Felix Aylmer and Enid Stamp-Taylor. Music is by Louis Levy and cinematography by Jack E. Cox.
Plot finds Lockwood as the wicked lady of the title, a woman who has absolutely no guilt in stealing her friend's man, in cheating, gambling and much much worse...
An absolute riot out of Gainsborough Pictures' juicy melodrama period, pic finds the studio pushing one of their female lead characters to a devilish edge. Here we have Lady Barbara Skelton (Lockwood) pushing way over the boundaries of social acceptability, all while deliciously thumbing her nose at feminine stereotypes. She has the men dangling from her strings of puppetry power, regardless of if they are morons or the ones who would happily give her the world.
Things go up a further gear once Mason's dandy highwayman joins the fray, for Skelton and Jackson seem a match made in rouge heaven. But there are twists and turns throughout, some truly surprising sequences, plenty of racy thunder for 1945 (laughably the pic was edited in America as the Hays Code objected to Lockwood's cleavage) - mind you it is a sight to behold, no wonder Captain Jackson slides in for a good snog every chance he gets!
Unsurprisingly the era of film making dictated there has to be some sort of moral ethic in how the picture finishes, and yet it's actually not disappointing. There's a noirish kink to it, a sort of society sick joke getting back at the woman who has so readily flipped the bird at the society around her. Cast are bang on form, so much so it would be unfair to single one of them out (ok, maybe Mason since his gallows shenanigans is something to be joyful about), while Arliss (The Man in Grey) blends the various larks, lust and ligatures with consummate skill. 8/10
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★ 8 / 10
LDRose
The Wicked Lady is a sumptuous tale of excitement, passion, danger and deceit. Margaret Lockwood plays Barbara Skelton, who engages in treachery almost from…
The Wicked Lady is a sumptuous tale of excitement, passion, danger and deceit. Margaret Lockwood plays Barbara Skelton, who engages in treachery almost from the outset by stealing her best friend's man. It becomes clear that she is a ruthless character who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, even engaging in highway robbery to enliven her dull existence. Soon she meets a notorious highwayman, Jerry Jackson, and sparks soon begin to fly between the two outlaws! In order to preserve her secret lifestyle, all manner of wickedness ensues. Margaret Lockwood is fantastic as the selfish, devious protagonist and James Mason smolders as the dashing highwayman. This is a wicked treat not to be missed!
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★ 8 / 10
A true classic which should be made available on DVD in North America
bbhlthph
At the end of World War II the U.K. Gainsborough Studios had a very fine reputation based on the production of a long string of successful films, and backed by…
At the end of World War II the U.K. Gainsborough Studios had a very fine reputation based on the production of a long string of successful films, and backed by a list of very well known performers on whom they could call. November 1945 saw the release of "The Wicked Lady" - a film version of a historical novel by Magdalen King Hall which featured four of their major stars, with Margaret Lockwood in the title role supported by Jean Kent, James Mason and Patricia Roc. Initially this film was panned by many of the critics, but it was immensely successful at the U.K. box office and has now certainly achieved the status of a major black and white classic. I first saw it at quite a young age soon after it was released, and (perhaps largely because of my impressionable age) thought it must be one of the most sexy films ever released. However a few years later I saw it again and this confirmed my first impression. Margaret Lockwood was a great actress who participated in some 50 films during a career which spanned over more than 40 years. The Wicked Lady was a mid-career film made at a time when she was at the peak of her powers and she gave a memorable, if chilling, performance in the part of Lady Barbara Skelton The performances of her co-stars were perhaps not quite so memorable, but this was largely because the premise of both the book and the film was that the wicked lady had a very much stronger character than anyone else with whom she interacted, and it would be hard to seriously fault any of the acting.For some reason this film never achieved comparable success in the U.S.A. Because the meticulously recreated seventeenth century costumes used for the original version displayed too much décolletage for the Hayes office, it was re-filmed a year after it was first released with modified costumes, specifically designed for the U.S. market. According to IMDb, Universal Pictures were the U.S. distributors; but the film does not seem to be widely known and may only have received a very limited distribution - IMDb do not even list a U.S. rating for this film. Thirty eight years later the film was remade under the same title in colour, with Faye Dunaway in the title role. As is so often the case in such circumstances I found the original version to be very much more memorable, but unfortunately it has now become very difficult to purchase in a form suitable for home viewing. A DVD in PAL format has been released in Europe, but I do not think it was ever produced in NTSC format - one hopes this was not because of continuing concern about the necklines.This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the original film (which was never released in the United States) and I am now submitting these comments to IMDb to suggest that the anniversary provides an ideal opportunity to release a North American DVD version of it. Many classic black and white films have been released on DVD in this way during the past few years and "The Wicked Lady" would be a worthy addition to this list. Some of the listed prices for such releases tend to be rather high, suggesting that large sales of monochrome films are not expected today. If this is a concern the original version of the film could probably be paired with the 1983 colour remake in a double release which would provide viewers interested in the development of the modern cinema with an excellent opportunity to compare the film making techniques of two very different periods.
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6.8/10
2K
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Never thought I was going to enjoy so much this movie. Great script and great acting of the cast. Though James Mason's part was sort of secondary he always stole the scene when he appeared. It's not a swashbuckler movie (as someone mentioned here), there are no fighting scenes with swords, it's not Scaramouche or Captain Blood, just some pistol shots and chasing on horses. But yes, Barbara Lockwood was great playing the evil woman.