Plot Intro
This is the true story of Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward), a con artist and prostitute who suddenly finds herself convicted of the murder of an elderly woman and sentenced to death. As the time of her execution approaches, Barbara makes repeated attempts to prove her innocence…
Now that we are well into the 1950s, we are getting female performances and characters with a great deal more grit than in the previous decade. The '40s was fraught with glamorous and impossible heroines (Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine, Jennifer Jones and Olivia de Havilland). The '50s returns to the more downtrodden, tragic female leads that we got in the '30s but with more reality and greater emphasis on true stories (this is the third biographical film in a row). This is interesting because during our journey through the Best Picture winners, the gritty, more socially-conscious movies did not arrive until the late '60s, with the '50s focusing more on big-budget epics and musicals.
Susan Hayward certainly pulls out all the stops here. She plays Barbara as erratic, desperate and hot-tempered, a far cry from the more placid Joanne Woodward in the previous year, or the wide-eyed vulnerability of Ingrid Bergman the year before that. It’s a passionate performance but I would question whether it’s appropriate for the content and intentions of the film. Like The Three Faces of Eve, the film goes to great pains to tell us that the events are facts, and there are some courtroom and prison scenes where there is immense attention to detail. But Hayward’s performance feels theatrical and overdone in comparison.
It’s also kind of hilarious how beautiful she is, as are her fellow inmates. Having watched Orange is the New Black, an outstanding series that doesn’t hold back from showing the grim, stomach-turning reality of prison life, it felt insane to me that all female inmates would have such well-coiffed hairstyles, full make-up and smooth skin. Where are they getting all these beauty products?!
But the big downside to the film is the same as the previous two Best Actress wins, that although it claims to be cold, hard fact, a quick Wikipedia search proves otherwise. I Want To Live! presents Barbara as unquestionably innocent, a misguided and wrong-place-wrong-time criminal vilified by the press and public. But the real evidence (and even Susan Hayward herself who did a large amount of research agreed) proves pretty clearly that Barbara is guilty. Of course, this doesn’t justify her eventual fate - for me, the capital punishment would be universally banned. I’m not against storytellers playing with history in order to create entertainment. It can provide an accessible way in which people end up more educated and motivated to read around a subject. But I don’t like when a film sets itself up as objective fact when it is anything but.
The film’s big high point for me was the final 20 minutes which shows, in excruciating detail, the processes and build-up to Barbara’s execution in a gas chamber. It shows how the toxic gas is made, the steps to be taken, and the various delays as a result of Barbara’s final attempts to be found innocent. Although it doesn’t seem to have anything opinionated to say about the death penalty (adding to the film trying to be more of a documentary than a piece of fiction), it is still a sickening experience and it made me question what could be going through a condemned person’s mind as they walk their final walk and sit in the chamber awaiting their fate while being gawked at by journalists like an animal in a cage.
Hayward was a well-established actress in the late '50s who had tackled a variety of hardcore roles. This was actually her fifth and last nomination for Best Actress and her previous nominations also included other historical figures. It would also be her last big success. She moved to Georgia because her second husband (whom she married in 1957) owned a ranch there, and the distance from Hollywood rendered her film roles more sporadic throughout the 1960s. She sadly met an untimely death from brain cancer in 1975, aged just 57, one of the shortest careers and life spans of the Best Actress winners, but a well-remembered name nonetheless.
The final 20 minutes which showed just how gruelling and cold the lead-up to execution in the USA is. Ban capital punishment. Ban it all, I say!
Like the previous film, I Want to Live!’s claim of accuracy and fact is questionable. Even if they took their claim out (it’s just a title card at the beginning and end) this would change things for me.
I Want To Live! sounds like the title of a mid-range ‘20s musical about a down-on-his-luck handsome aristocrat who goes on a series of adventures in New York one night before he ends up marrying some beautiful ditzy heiress.
It’s actually the true (ish) story of Barbara Graham, a criminal who ended up being found guilty of murder and executed by gas chamber. Awkward.
I say true-ish because the film posits Graham as almost certainly innocent of the charge. It admits she’s a ‘tough cookie’ who has committed crimes including theft, prostitution and vice, but says she’d steer clear of murder. To that end we get lots of her clutching her baby son and weeping, or passionately telling anyone who’d listen that she’s innocent. Wikipedia has a somewhat different take, with the real Graham being described by those who met her as ‘sociopathic’. Indeed even watching this sanitised version, you get the idea she almost certainly did ‘do it’.
It’s not a bad film - certainly not dull, and I was intrigued for the full two-hour running time (yet more evidence that two hours is the perfect maximum length for any film, are you listening, Scorsese?) Susan Hayward’s Graham is a refreshing tonic against the sappier of Hollywood’s leading women, being sharp and rarely moved to emotion. There’s even a (slightly annoying) motif of her pretending to throw dice and making decisions on the outcome. Life for Graham, this film suggests, is akin to living from chance to chance.
There’s also some great set-pieces. I liked the scene where Hayward is being tailed by undercover detectives, including a dotty-looking old lady on a bus. There’s also a mad party-scene where Graham is wildly dancing, and Hayward’s portrayal of this is so vigorous that one fears that she is actually mid-epileptic fit. However the final half hour of the film is particularly strong, showing Graham riding wave after wave of hope - her gas chamber appointment being delayed again and again, even as she’s about to walk into it. The rise and fall of each pause and delay is exhausting to watch, let alone experience.
Hayward herself is pretty unremarkable by today’s standards. We have actors like Frances McDormand and Nicole Kidman who can convey a multitude without lifting an eyebrow so while Hayward’s muted and controlled performance may have felt fresh in the ‘50s, it feels less so now. Satisfyingly she does yell ‘I want to live!’ at one point - saying the title in the film always makes me giggle.
Ultimately this film feels quite controlled. I didn’t feel particularly for the subject and I’m not sure of the intention behind it. Casting Graham as an innocent women attacked by the justice system might have felt more powerful if there wasn’t such a sneaking suspicion she actually did murder a defenceless widow (Hayward herself said she thought Graham did it). But an interesting and different film in the line up of romances and dramas - and also not our only death-row film in this project as Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking is yet to come…
The scene where they prepare (and eventually use) the gas chamber is fascinatingly detailed. Apparently it’s very accurate and I imagine intended to shock. However I wasn’t particularly affected emotionally. If it was intended to force the American people to turn against the death penalty, it didn’t work. As of January 2022, there are 2,436 people on death row in the States.
I didn’t love Graham, and I think her perceived strong performance is actually more a testament to a decent script. Another actress might well have found more nuance and unease in the role - making her appear lily-white didn’t feel very truthful.
Mark
5/10
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