Robert Wise Centenary: I Want to Live! (1958)
Monday, September 8, 2014 at 6:30PM 
Though the internet seems to increasingly denigrate the importance of punctuation, once upon a time it was vital to our sense of understanding language. Would I Want To Live! have any of the same feverish impact without that exclamation mark at the end of its title? Perhaps. But it signifies the bold stance of this cry for social justice in a millisecond. I mean, just look at this poster! Only Britain's notorious newspaper The Daily Mail has taglines that long these days.
That boldness is a quality more of the film's frenzied marketing than of the film itself; director Robert Wise, whose centennial we're marking this week, excised the closing rhetoric that producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz was insisting upon, sure that if an audience wasn't convinced of the film's social statement by then, a few platitudes wouldn't make a difference. As our series of pieces has and will demonstrate, Wise was an extremely adaptable filmmaker who transcended genre, but he often pursued work that aligned with his anti-establishment politics.
Never more so than here [More...]
I Want to Live! is an incredibly direct social drama which is at pains to underline the injustice of capital punishment.
Wise visited San Quentin, the setting for the incredibly ponderous climactic execution, and witnessed an execution for himself, all for the cause of the accurate depiction of the painful process on screen. The camera lingers gruesomely on the cyanide pellets, strange slimy ovals tossed around in thick black gloves. It doesn't even demonise the men tasked with these technicalities; Wise, with his usual even hand, posits the whole social system as the enemy, rather than any part of it. This is visualised most vividly in the mass of old men who gather to witness the execution, a wall of white, straight suits revelling in the "just" punishment of a woman.
In going straight to Wise, I've rather buried the usual lead of discussion regarding I Want to Live!; Susan Hayward won her Best Actress Oscar on her fifth nomination here, for her turn as real life murderess Barbara Graham. Wise's pictures were usually ensemble pieces, so the way just about everything in I Want to Live! cedes itself to Hayward is quite remarkable. It's the only way the film can work on the level it needs too, though; the audience needs to throw their lot in with Barbara and believe in her innocence for the film's message to resonate.
The fact that the overwhelming evidence against Graham led even Hayward herself to later admit she believed the woman to be guilty is irrelevant. Nelson Gidding's script is based on Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Montgomery's articles about the case, and the journalist is second lead here, played rather dryly by Simon Oakland in his film debut (he would collaborate with Wise again for West Side Story). Montgomery was in part responsible for Graham's incredible demonisation by the press and for extensive efforts to repeal her death sentence. Some seven years behind Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, the film can hardly be seen as eerily prescient in its depiction of the sensationalist power of the press, but the alarming proximity of the media to the case, at least as depicted here, seems almost parodic. Wise films news reports on television screens almost in their entirety, as if the cameraman is glued to the unfolding events.
The film's stylistic shifts work awkwardly against it, despite their individual proficiency, as they separate Hayward's performance into different modes of womanhood - thereby collapsing Barbara Graham as a complete character. We begin in a jazz club, camera askew on canted angles to signify the moral decrepitude of the milieu and lifestyle. Narrative soon interrupts the unpredictable rhythms of the jazz combo, as we meet Barbara in a hotel room above, her liaison with a New Jerseyman interrupted by police. It's a striking introduction to Hayward, who I'd never encountered before; somehow she has fostered her own 'brand' of picture that had led me to avoid what sounded like a preaching, blunt inflection to a whole career.
Instead, Hayward is pleasingly, if a little too simply, tough and full of sass; she cuts straight to an understanding of how Barbara has a low but realistic sense of her social standing. Later, this translates into a brassy rebellion to her voice and a steely, resistant glare, as the film tracks Barbara's prolonged fight against her death sentence. It's a rather one note performance, but it's at least a robust note that tussles admirably with the film's visual manipulation of her character. From the implicit moral judgement of her life as a prostitute, gambler and con-woman, the film is forced to turn her into a matronly, motherly figure by means of costume and cinematography, lest a 1950s audience sympathise with an unvirtuous woman.
I Want to Live! ultimately betrays Wise's prioritisation of his cause above character, which should really be working in harmony. The film whirls through the early scenes, speeding through landmark events like marriage and childbirth, as if Barbara's life is preordained and her attempts at happiness a generic disaster. There's still a whole quarter of the film's running time remaining as we enter Barbara's final hours, and though the ponderous reenaction of the execution routine was obviously politically powerful, it now plays out with increasing fatigue, pushing Barbara's emotional state into the background. Instead it's life and death that hangs in the balance, a delicate, tense collection of portmanteau shots, things and people that decide Barbara's face.
This is not a film that was made to be watched in the future.
Writing this in Britain, where capital punishment hasn't been legal since 1973, it seems an extraordinarily antiquated film, yet its message has still not had the full effect in the USA. Films like Dead Man Walking and Werner Herzog's documentary Into the Abyss continue the argument against the death sentence, but I Want to Live!, for all its faults, still rings with anger and pain against a situation it knows to be wrong. Wise's dedication and restraint from pushing too hard at the potential histrionics makes for a film that belies its curio status.
Reader Comments (16)
This was La Hayward's fifth and final Oscar Nomination and only win. The other Oscar-winninig Susan also won on her fifth nomination for an anti-capital-punishment movie, the aforementioned «Dead Man Walking.» I haven't seen this movie in a long time. I believe it to be the best performance by the arguably best actress of the fifties.
Not sure how I only counted three thanks for the correction. Interesting parallel as well!
Interesting take on the film. It has dated as most films do but if you look at it in the context of the times there are still good things in it. The extended time given to the execution is deliberate I think to give the viewer an idea of the anguish Graham was going though with the last minute reprieves and so forth.
Susan Hayward won for this though the previous of her five nominations, I'll Cry Tomorrow, was actually her best work. Unfortunately her reputation has taken a hit in more recent times, unfairly so. She was considered one of the best dramatic actresses in her heyday and was 20th Century Fox's top star. I think it's partly due to the fact that her best known films now are ones from her later career which consisted heavily of soap opera type dramas, I happen to love those films but they are a specific type of movie and require a more florid style than is currently fashionable. There are many of her films where she was more subdued and varied, The President's Lady, The Lusty Men and I'd Climb the Highest Mountain for example.
Her early death is another factor, her contemporaries Davis, Crawford, Stanwyck, Hepburn etc. were able to extend their familiarity into modern day awareness in part due to their longevity. Just when she was starting to move into television, she had done a pair of very successful TV movies one of which, Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole, about an intercity doctor working in a slum clinic was going to series when she was felled by brain cancer. Had she survived she probably would have moved into the next phase of her career a respected grande dame as Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis, with whom she shared similarities, were able to do and her full catalog of films would be more well known.
It is odd/funny to read that Susan is now considered a contemporary of the Misses Davis and Stanwyck. She was. But not in movie years though she came to Hollywood to try for Scarlet, a role the other two were considered for too. As Brooklyn-born she definitely has a connection with Ruby and by temperament she was always linked to Bette who played her mother (though eight? years older) in «Where Love Has Gone» and whose «Dark Victory» she remade. Didn't she? Her "coronation" as 50s queen was settled when she was billed above Ava in the Kilimanjaro movie though both were under Peck. Are actors as beautiful nowadays? Oh, I'm old! Odd too (but not funny) was the reception she got at her last Oscar appearance, almost as odd as the one Deborah Kerr (it rhymes with Star) got years later. But that's Tinseltown!
Capita-What was odd about her reception at her last appearance at the Oscars?
She was extremely ill which had been kept quiet but was heavily rumored. She had been carefully made up to hid the ravages of her illness and the flaming red hair was a wig, her hair having been lost to radiation treatments. When she and Heston entered she cut the applause short herself by starting to speak right away because she was aware she could only sustain the illusion for so long, she had been given a strong dose of anti-seizure medication. Heston was aware of the situation, if you watch the clip on Youtube you'll notice he lead her off in the opposite direction from the winner contrary to the usual practice of the presenters following the them across the stage. She had a major seizure almost as soon as she had left the building and reached her limo. It was an admirable effort to have that one last shining moment although she managed to hang on in seclusion for almost another year afterwards.
She looked wonderful! And behaved magnificently. Odd: She didn't get a standing ovation. Nor did Miss Kerr. As I remember. I might be wrong.
"the film is forced to turn her into a matronly, motherly figure by means of costume and cinematography"
i was just thinking what a snazzy jacket and pendant combo she chose for her execution outfit
I am not a fan of this movie. As a fan of Wise's, this one is truly disappointing. I think he did this with his heart instead of his head. I don't know how he got an Oscar nomination for directing this. The heavy stylization and the intrusive, emphatic jazz score combine to give one a real headache. And I really don't want to offend Ms. Hayward's devotees, but she is BAD in this. Terrible Oscar decision.
I'm with brookesboy: Hayward was as subtle as a truck, but then so is Wise's movie. But her stardom and Oscar attention fascinates me, like Greer Garson's.
Fifty years hence some Alfred or other may write the same about THE Miss Meryl Streep. I'm kind of doing it now, am I not?
haha Capita: I have, many times!
Alfred, how I love me some Greer Garson! Random Harvest is a personal fave. Gets me every time. When Ron pulls out that key at the end...OMG
Had they just given Hayward the Oscar she deserved for Smash Up instead of Loretta Young, (which...I mean, does anyone think Loretta Young deserved that Oscar?), then she wouldn't have had to have won for I Want to Live!.
Although, if Hayward already had a statue, I don't know who wins in '58. Maybe Russell as a makeup Oscar, since she was the favorite to win when she lost for Mourning Becomes Electra?
I would have rather seen Susie win for I''ll Cry Tomorrow but an Oscar for Roz in Auntie Mame couldn't be considered a makeup Oscar. She's amazing in it providing the movie with enough centrifugal force to power five films. The movie itself might be very stagy, still a lot of fun though, but Russell is hilarious. I would much rather have seen her win for Mame than the heavy Electra where she was miscast, a fact that even she was aware of but she owed Dudley Nichols a favor.
I think Russell is great in Auntie Mame as well. I just meant in terms of narrative. I'm sure she would have garnered votes (had she won) from a few voters who were perhaps doing penance for Mourning Becomes Electra for which she was the frontrunner, even if I happen to agree that she's miscast.
Good for you, Alfred. But you ruined my riposte.
Poor Russell got only a Humanitarian – and when she could hardly hold on to it. Joan is dead but her spirit lives. I love Roz! And I'm sure Loretta gave her good head that night.