A feminist response to the misogyny that overran the film industry in the 1940's. The premise is pure noir. Loretta Young's psychology professor is sexually assaulted by a student; in defending herself, she accidentally kills him. And then like so many noir protagonists, she's left having to cover up her crime - and not merely cover it up, but lend her expertise to the investigation. But here's the twist: before he died, her student penned a personality profile of his professor that's likely to expose her: the sexually frustrated female of many a Forties flick (e.g., Young's own 'The Doctor Takes a Wife'), who hides her fear of intimacy behind glasses she doesn't need. Young realizes that to avoid detection, she'll need to forge a more outgoing persona, and though it starts out as a ruse, she soon grows comfortable in her own skin. She discovers she enjoys this new game of cat and mouse, toying with witnesses who don't recognize her because she's figuratively and literally let down her hair. In time she reclaims the upper hand that women on screen had routinely enjoyed a decade earlier. 'The Accused' is eager to expose how '40s films have pigeon-holed women, and fittingly, screenwriter Ketti Frings lays the blame squarely at the feet of men. The film's two male leads - one of whom (Bob Cummings) ultimately wins her - ogle and leer at Young as if it's something women should not only be used to, but enjoy. (When she dresses up for a dinner date, Cummings notes approvingly that her "brains don't show.") It's hard enough in this environment for a woman to get by. A woman in academia? She hasn't got a chance. Small wonder that Young has receded into a repressed version of herself; it's an act of self-preservation. Frings' screenplay not only explains why so many post-war women on screen have lost their sense of liberation, but makes it clear that no men are going to swoop in and save them; they'll have to save themselves. Although Frings receives the sole script credit, at least six other writers at Paramount had a hand in it, but it never feels like a hodgepodge; the touchups and rewrites result in energy, bite and an abundance of good lines. Heck, 'The Accused' even manages to make that problematic staple of film noir - "the police will never believe it's an accident, I'll have to cover it up" - entirely convincing. Young is vibrant throughout.
Review of The Accused
