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Zinnemann's The Men is concurrent, Ida Lupino has her own portrait of identity and mobility "photographed where it happened." Nightclub dancers (Sally Forrest, Keefe Brasselle) with a jazzy symbolic act, crossed swords and cutout tickers in a pas de deux of equilibrium, the Not Wanted couple further along the road. Suddenly grounded by polio, she must regain control of her body while he tries working at Happy Homes Inc. "A long pull ahead" at Santa Monica's Kabat-Kaiser Institute for rehabilitation, she asks to be alone in her room and smothers a scream. "All our knowledge doesn't mean a thing unless the mind and the heart are helping." An exceptional chronicler of pain and confusion, Lupino's remarkable matter-of-factness in the search for wholeness. Therapy in swimming pools and art classes, the heroine molds a clay effigy of the couple only to stab it in frustration, the fellow patient with the power of serenity (Hugh O'Brian) lends a hand. "You'll be surprised at what you'll do when you've made up your mind to live again." A documentarian's eye on the square dance of wheelchairs, an intricate choreography glimpsed in rapt long shots until the beau intrudes with gardenia in hand. Their engagement becomes a source of bitterness, the fellow returns to the office soused to contemplate a dollhouse, cf. Fleischer's Child of Divorce. (As the receptionist who takes him home and becomes achingly aware that she's a momentary replacement, Eve Miller occupies a tangible space of rue and melancholia.) "Graduation day," back on your feet. To leave the building is a second birth for the former hoofer, the walking stick falls by the side of the embrace. With Lawrence Dobkin, Rita Lupino, Herb Butterfield, Stanley Waxman, Kevin O'Morrison, and Jerry Hausner. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |