Shockproof

“Corrosion. That’s what will happen to us.” So it goes with parole officer Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde) and his parolee Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight) in Douglas Sirk’s Shockproof. Just out of the pen and under Marat’s watch, Jenny’s still in love with gambler Harry Wesson (John Baragrey), the man for whom she committed murder and went to prison and whom Marat has forbidden her to associate with again. But the tenacious Wesson keeps his claws in Jenny, so Marat hires her as a live-in caretaker for his blind mother (Esther Minciotti), amping up his emotional attraction and complicating Jenny’s feelings for Wesson, which will lead to jealousy and later a gun-wielding confrontation. In the third act, Marat and Jenny are forced to flee to another state and create new identities, but, especially in noir, the past never stays in the past. The film’s tonal shifts between hard-boiled and melodramatic won’t be every viewer’s cup of tea, but the story commands attention throughout (keep an eye out for a shocking suicide off a balcony early on). Cornel Wilde is as authentic and charming as always (of course, he also gets an obligatory scene to show off his physique), his affection toward Knight wholly believable in part because the two were married in real life at the time. Sirk doesn’t douse the film with traditional noir shadows and light, but still adds a degree of innovation through extensive use of reflections, framing, and dramatic camera angles from above and below.