Joan Crawford did not do shading, subtlety or character acting. She did something much more gothic. Sudden Fear plays straight to her strengths, a “woman in peril” movie that starts out in the world of realism but slips gradually into the realm of the histrionic.
In early scenes Crawford’s acting looks mummified, as if the light of naturalism had been shone on a museum artefact. Playing a writer whose latest Broadway smash is about to be staged, her Myra Hudson is meant to be a woman born rich who has nevertheless forged her own career away from daddy’s money, and become successful in her own right.
And then she meets Jack Palance’s Lester Blaine, a smooth, well read, cosmopolitan actor who sweeps her off her feet, in spite of the fact that she just got him fired from her latest show. Lester is from the wrong side of the tracks and Myra admires that about him. He’s escaped his origins by working hard and reading a book or two. One of the ways Lester woos Myra is by quoting Shakespeare to her. Another is by being the man’s man – taking charge and not harbouring resentment about losing the acting gig. They have soon married.
What Myra cannot see is that Lester’s smooth, charming exterior is all a front and that he’s only after her for the lifestyle. A situation her new husband might have tolerated for the rest of his days, if an old flame and companion in grifting – Gloria Grahame’s Irene – hadn’t suddenly reappeared in his life.
A plot to kill Myra has soon been hatched, and from the moment we are introduced to Myra’s new-fangled dictating machine, which turns on automatically when, Siri-like, it hears something, we know that this bit of tech is going to be somehow pivotal.
Crawford had been around since the silent era and audiences in 1952 knew that. They knew she had to be mid-40s at the very least (she was in fact 46) and that relative newcomer Palance was younger than her (33). That older-younger dynamic is partly what this film is about. But it’s also about a resourceful female under pressure deciding to fight back. It’s at the point that Myra discovers the plot to kill her and sets out to try and thwart Lester and Irene’s plans that the film takes a sharp turn, and starts its journey towards greatness.
The first two thirds are good but it’s in the last third that everything clicks together. Crawford’s mad acting, the overcooked lighting by the great Charles Lang, David Miller’s steady direction, with little touches of visual brilliance dotted throughout, and Palance’s smooth performance, with violence simmering beneath. It won him an Oscar nomination (the Academy never could and still can’t tell the difference between a good role and good acting) and was the making of his career. Gloria Grahame is again the brassy broad, her overpainted lips and urgent bad-girl persona making her a perfect Irene. Elmer Bernstein’s score, meanwhile, follows the mood, starting out as insinuating and becoming increasingly hysterical.
Since Crawford was the executive producer and hired most of the talent – Palance and Grahame, Miller, Lang and Bernstein – this is very much her film. In many ways it’s another lap of the Mildred Pierce track – resourceful woman fights fate and those conspiring against her – but this time the tone is edge-of-seat thriller. Crawford plays it brilliantly. There is nothing as unfashionable as Joan Crawford’s acting style – it wasn’t fashionable even in the 1950s – but Sudden Fear gives us an example of the sort of material it was designed for.
If you’re going to give it a spin, the Cohen Film Collection version is the one to go for. It’s got a 1080p 2K restoration which brings up all sorts of detail that’s just murk in other versions. It’s the one I watched – Lang’s lighting looks particular spiffy, and it sounds good too.
Sudden Fear – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
