Joan Crawford Flaunted Her Razor-Sharp Edge in This Underrated, Twisty Noir That’s All Killer, No Filler

Nobody suffered on-screen the way Joan Crawford did, be it physically, mentally, or emotionally. She put herself through the ringer with poise and dedicated restraint, even as her later roles sold her to a new generation as a hysterical camp icon. While always maintaining her dignity and composure, she frequently used her expert knowledge of her strengths and how to effectively display emotion for the camera to play accomplished women having to fight for what they want in life. That’s why she was so great in countless hectic thrillers, including Sudden Fear, where she played a woman in over her head in a deadly game of tainted love.

What Is ‘Sudden Fear’ About?

Joan Crawford in 'Sudden Fear' — Image via RKO Pictures

Myra Hudson (Crawford) rose from being just your average wealthy heiress to a renowned playwright. In casting her new romantic drama play, she turns down a promising younger man named Lester (Jack Palance), insisting that he doesn’t have a “romantic” look about him. She later re-encounters Lester on a train ride back to her San Francisco home, where the two unexpectedly fall for each other. Myra is utterly infatuated with his tenderness and how he makes her feel so special, so much so that she’s willing to leave everything to him in her will. She makes this decision a bit too rashly, as she accidentally finds out that Lester doesn’t actually love her at all and is plotting with his mistress, Irene (Gloria Grahame), to kill Myra and take all her money. Now, with Myra knowing all the cards in play and Lester unaware, she’ll have to think her way out of her demise and put her dramatic construction skills to the ultimate test.

Joan Crawford Pulled Many Strings To Make ‘Sudden Fear’ Happen

Crawford was notorious for her perfectionism and dedication to every aspect of the filmmaking craft, and Sudden Fear is a monument to her unflappable hustle. By most accounts, she single-handedly made the film happen when she presented the idea to RKO, and was responsible for most of the creative decisions. She chose David Miller to direct, she chose the two screenwriters, she chose the Oscar-nominated heavyweight Charles Lang to shoot, and even got future Oscar winners Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame on-board as costars. That meticulous choosiness bleeds into her characterization of Myra as a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to control what she can control, thereby drawing attention to how shocking it is to see her have such reckless abandon in her romance with Lester. We spend so much time on how her love for Lester grows and the delicacy with which Crawford shows us that Lester brings out a side of Myra that no one else sees. Crawford tended to play women who were obsessive about their love, be it tragically consumed or psychotically possessive, but her performance in Sudden Fear is one of her best because of the tightrope she walks of showing her resolution and self-possession melting away into pleading yearning and then into desperate panic.

Blended image of Joan Crawford with her name in the background.

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‘Sudden Fear’ Relishes Joan Crawford’s Physical Mastery

With flashes of Alfred Hitchcock‘s formalist confidence and Robert Siodmak‘s expressionist shadow-play, Sudden Fear functions as a noir without the belabored devotion to the aesthetic clichés and as a romantic melodrama without histrionic suds. It knows it doesn’t need to hang its hat too hard on the established effects of either of those because it already has the stylistic effect needed to make it work: Joan Crawford’s physical mastery. Many of the stand-out scenes of the film, particularly when it really wants to ratchet the tension up and make the audience realize just how deeply in trouble Myra is, are etched and realized entirely on Crawford’s face and physical timing. Like the scene where Myra first learns of the deception while listening to a recording device, and just Crawford working through her steadily decreasing composure as she hears her husband plotting to kill her, is nothing less than a masterclass in taking the audience on a rich journey through suggestive movements rather than hugely declarative “acting” statements.

Or take the visually daring moment where Myra hides from an assailant in a closet, with just one vertical strip of light exposing her face. For well over a minute, we see how her face contorts and silently begs and strangles itself to prevent herself from exposing her position. It’s a remarkably gut-wrenching sequence, especially because of how unflattering it is on her face, with harsh light highlighting how sweat-drenched she is, showing Crawford’s dedication to character authenticity. Few actresses have been so believably under pressure and fighting as Joan Crawford is when trying to keep her thoughts together as her life is on the line, the fire in her eyes refusing to be extinguished. For as sensitively written and well-directed as Sudden Fear is, it doesn’t achieve the catharsis of a woman rediscovering herself, or the survivalist thrill of watching an intelligent character formulate and flawlessly execute a multistep plan, without Joan Crawford’s carefully considered performance.