Strange Woman (1946)

DIRECTOR: Edgar G. Ulmer
WRITERS: Herb Meadow, Hunt Stromberg, Edgar G. Ulmer, Ben Ames Williams (novel)
CAST: Hedy Lamarr, George Sanders, Louis Hayward, Gene Lockhart
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lucien Andriot
COUNTRY: USA
GENRE: Noir, drama
MISCELLANY: 100m

We meet Jenny Hager when she's a young girl, holding a playmate's head under water with her foot, mocking him as he flails and gasps and cries for help.

When one of the richest men in town runs over to investigate, Jenny jumps in the water and pulls the boy, Ephraim, to safety. Years later, he recalls her cruelty, and Jenny indignantly reminds him that she's the one who saved him from drowning.

It's possible that Jenny is trying to deceive Ephraim, but it's also possible that she's trying to delude herself, that her memory of the incident is selective and that on some level she would like to think of herself as a good person.

Because of the film's moral ambiguity, I am taking pains to avoid terming Jenny a femme fatale, in an attempt to imagine her as a complex person, capable of helping and hurting others both. Jenny uses her sex appeal to get ahead, but the men who desire her are not blameless for their actions.

Set in the first half of the 19th century in Bangor, Maine, "Strange Woman" focuses on the ambitions of Jenny, who was raised by her alcoholic father in the hardscrabble section of town called the "devil's half acre," but through her Ulmer exposes the darkness of the other "more respectable" citizens.

When Jenny marries Ephraim's wealthy father, Isaiah, she does not pretend it's for anything but security — and if she did not scheme to make the marriage happen, she at least seized on opportunities when they arose. In a fight with her father, she boasts that she "made" Isaiah want her. Then, after her father whips her, although he has fallen to the ground, she runs to the Poster house acting as if she were in imminent danger, and benefits from the miscommunication.

The whipping scene has sexual overtones — Jenny's father warns her that this will be one beating that she won't like, and at first sight of the whip, Jenny's eyes light up. At the Poster house, she provocatively displays her whip marks to Isaiah, and when the virtuous old servantwoman tending to Jenny's wounds sees the gleam in old Isaiah's eye, she slams the bedroom door in his face. This sparks lust-filled Isaiah to rescue Jenny from her father by marrying her at once.

Even before Jenny ran to his house that night, Isaiah seems to have had designs on her. When Jenny wanders off with a sailor, interrupting a mildly flirtatious exchange with Isaiah, he goes straight for her father, buys him a drink and rats out the affair, setting in motion the beating that drives the girl to his arms.

So while Jenny is using Isaiah for his money and Isaiah is using Jenny for her body, to make the arrangement socially acceptable, she has pretended to be a victim and he has pretended to be a benefactor — and neither seems aware of the other's wiles.

Because Jenny is in the marriage for the money, it is difficult to pity her dissatisfaction, but it is not surprising that the passionate and attractive young woman's eyes wander. Things get especially twisted when she writes to Isaiah's son Ephraim, her old playmate and boyfriend, beckoning him home to kiss his "new mother" goodnight. This incestuous love triangle threatens to become fatal, the intentions of the characters always murky.

As sensational as Jenny's sexual indiscretions are, Ulmer shows another side. She never forgets her roots, faithfully delivering food and medicine to the residents of her old neighborhood, becoming a beloved patron of the poor. Is she feigning empathy for appearances sake, like she did by the river that day? Or is her empathy for the poor sincere because she was once a have-not herself? Do her motives matter if she is helping people? Likewise if she's hurting people?

You get the sense that Jenny would have married for love had she not been born poor. When her rich friend Meg confides her love for a man of little means, Jenny encourages her to marry him anyway. It could be argued that love is what Jenny always wanted but being born lower class, she sought money first.

Some fictional characters might be classified as "good" simply by default, not because they do beneficial things but simply by virtue of not doing the harmful things that a character like Jenny does.

Before we have a chance to reduce them ourselves, film characters usually are boiled down to fit in one of those categories, the filmmaker, like a lawyer, building a case by highlighting the behavior most likely to draw a positive or a negative reaction, taking care not to confuse us with subtlety.

Yet once we accept somebody as a hero or a villain, we lose our ability to impartially observe their behavior and to accept them as human beings as complicated as ourselves. I don't consider myself either a villain or a hero, yet routinely cast one or the other label on fictional characters and even real people I read about in the news.

Ulmer restrains judgment here, while painting a picture of Jenny that is as clear as a mirror.
— Becky