Born to Be Bad (1950)
Directed by Nicholas Ray

Film Review

Thanks to Nicholas Ray's inspired direction and a spellbinding central performance from Joan Fontaine, Born to Be Bad narrowly escapes being the humdrum melodrama it so evidently was intended to be and emerges as a compelling psychological drama, perhaps the subtlest and most ironic of Ray's film noir dramas.  Based on a 1928 novel entitled All Kneeling by Anne Parrish, the film had a difficult gestation period, with seven writers and five directors struggling in vain to get it off the ground before Ray showed up and made something of the unholy mess that RKO boss Howard Hughes had left for him.

Ray's dark sense of irony led him to frame the main male protagonist (smoothly played by Zachary Scott) as an obvious caricature of Hughes, although it is Joan Fontaine who dominates the film, as the coldly manipulative and yet strangely sympathetic heroine Christabel.  The more blatant Fontaine's social climbing exploits become, the more we like her.  Film noir stalwart Robert Ryan is cast, somewhat against type, as an emotionally fragile lover (an effective contrast to Scott's passionless Carey) and Joan Leslie is ideally suited for the role of the good girl Donna, the perfect counterpoint to Fontaine's constantly calculating minx.  Admittedly, Born to Be Bad may not be as stylish and polished as Ray's noir masterpieces - They Live by Night (1948) and In a Lonely Place (1950) - but it makes compulsive viewing, a gently twisted parody of a conventional melodrama in which every mouthful is spiked with acid.

Film Synopsis

Donna Foster invites her boss's niece Christabel to stay with her in her San Francisco apartment whilst she attends business school.  Unbeknown to her host, Christabel is an inveterate opportunist and social climber who soon manages to wreck Donna's engagement to wealthy socialite Curtis Carey.  Once Donna has broken off her engagement, Christabel makes her move and persuades Curtis to marry her, even though she has already lost her heart to an aspiring young writer, Nick Bradley...