A consummate example of Gothic noir, Peter Godfrey’s underseen and underappreciated
Cry Wolf stars noir stalwart Barbara Stanwyck as Sandra Marshall, the secret wife of Jim Caldwell (Richard Basehart), who appears at the Caldwell estate to claim her inheritance after Jim’s recent “accidental” death. Jim’s uncle Mark (an unusually menacing Errol Flynn) is immediately suspicious and demands to see the copy of Jim’s will which Sandra claims exists; while the attorneys search for it, Sandra takes up residence in the mansion, befriending Jim’s impressionable, orphaned sister Julie (Geraldine Brooks) who has long suspected that her uncle is up to no good in the laboratory he keeps locked and forbidden to household residents. A visual feast of expressionism in the vein of Robert Siodmak’s
The Spiral Staircase (1946),
Cry Wolf, for better or worse, emphasizes aesthetics over story (several plot holes are left unfilled), creating a lavish Brontean setting where secrets hide upstairs and evil lurks in the shadows. Stanwyck’s performance stresses physicality (she climbs roofs, hides in dumbwaiters, rides horses at full speed); one notable scene has her hiding from an unexpected visitor behind an open door in a clear homage to that famous scene in
Double Indemnity (1944). As always, Franz Waxman’s score is so naturally effective that it often goes unnoticed.
