BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

edwagreen Margaret Lockwood portrays a real 17th century tramp in this 1945 film which really has some amateurish writing when you think of it.Ms. Lockwood steals her cousin's fiancée on the day of the latter's wedding. She does it in faster mode than when Scarlett O'Hara stole Frank Kennedy from Sue Ellen in "Gone With the Wind."Barbara (Lockwood) could never be satisfied with one man. She goes from man to man. The woman has more lust in her life than can ever be imagined. She even cavorts with Michael Rennie on her wedding day.When she loses a brooch to her stuffy sister-in-law, she embarks upon a career of crime as a highway robber to get it back.This is a story of a woman who could not be with a man for a moment. James Mason appears as her new lover and fellow thief.Patricia Roc is sympathetic and overly sweet as Caroline, the cousin who lost her fiancée and stays on in the house. To think, we thought that Olivia De Havilland was such a sap in "Gone With the Wind." Roc even has her beat here.Of course, we can't allow for Barbara to get away with a life of crime as well as murder. She gets better with a gun than Annie Oakley did and kills 2 people along the way. Poor old, Felix Aylmer, she does him in via the poison route. What a fool he plays, quoting from the bible while actually believing that Barbara will reform.The ending is of course that Barbara gets what she deserves so that husband Griffin Jones should be able to go back to Caroline, the woman he should not have ditched to begin with. Imagine, Jones and Rennie were willing to switch women, but this was unknown to Barbara so she plots to put a bullet in Jones but instead, she gets shot by lover Rennie in her disguise as a robber!Come on. The writing here is actually churlish.

philipt1978 I grew up loving this film and its still amazing fun with drama, sex (1940s style)double crossing and corsets. Lockwood is at her best and looks stunning throughout the film. A great British cast with James Mason, Patricia Roc and Michael Rennie who looked incredibly sexy and when you consider his other work it hard to believe its the same man. Barbara Worth is in my opinion the most wicked lady ever put on film .What I'll comment on is that I got a friend to watch it recently and said this is the most wicked woman on film, which left her unimpressed until she watched and then agreed whole heartedly that Lockwood is the most wicked lady ever put on the silver screen. Its campy, overly dramatic and glamorous, what more could you want from a 1940s classic!

Igenlode Wordsmith Judging by the IMDb ratings breakdown for this film, sixty years after its production it remains very much "a women's movie" with female opinion rating it vastly higher than the male across every age group; fascinating to see how the divide still lingers! For my own part, I've always enjoyed the Gainsborough melodramas, and this is probably the best of them thanks to its wonderfully acerbic script.This style of film is basically the screen equivalent of the classic paperback 'bodice-ripper', with heaving bosoms, witty ripostes and dastardly deeds a-plenty -- which probably accounts for the sex divide. On the other hand, I'd have thought it had a good deal to appeal to the average male viewer... Frankly, I'm not surprised that this picture fell foul of the American censors (a fate shared with various other dramas set in morally dubious eras) in the 1940s: it's not just a matter of the amount of cleavage on display or of the protagonist's flagrantly shocking morals (since these are rewarded in appropriate fashion), but of the racy tinge to a lot of the dialogue.I think it's the dialogue that makes this film really shine. Where "The Man in Grey" has a tendency to moralise or lumber, "The Wicked Lady" has a sparkling streak of humour almost throughout; watching it in the cinema, you realise for the first time just how many laughs there are as they sweep across the audience. But it also benefits from a galaxy of strong female stars, from the minor parts to the two leading roles: Patricia Roc pulls off the difficult trick of making her gentle, idealistic character both sympathetic and believable when faced with the formidable opposition of Margaret Lockwood's beautiful, amoral Barbara. Barbara as anti-heroine almost takes over the film, and manages to attract our sympathies to the extent that we find ourselves willing her deception of old Hogarth to succeed -- but ultimately she goes too far. Too far for Jerry Jackson, and too far for this viewer at least to feel anything but vicarious satisfaction as her 'bittersweet' ending turns entirely bitter. The Wicked Lady is bad -- bad to the bone.My main gripe with the film, ironically, is with the happy outcome as shown, after the high emotions and dark ironies that have led up to the finale. I don't hold any grudge against the lovers at all -- it's obvious that all is going to turn out well once the truth is out in the open, and I'm all in favour of their union -- but the way that it is heavy-handedly interjected into the final frames of the picture creates a virtually bathetic anti-climax. That particular outcome really might have been taken for granted, rather than pasted on thickly at precisely the wrong moment...

Jem Odewahn Ah, The Wicked Lady...Gainsborough's most wickedly enjoyable film of them all! While my favourite Gainsborough (and the one I believe is the best) remains Madonna Of The Seven Moons, The Wicked Lady is endlessly enjoyable. Here we have, set in Regency England, a completely amoral, deliciously BAD villianess, Lady Barbara Skelton, flaunting every social convention and loving it! She steals her best friend Caroline's (the lovely Patricia Roc)husband-to-be Sir Ralph (the milksop Griffith Jones), marries him, takes to life as a highway woman for thrills (and there she meets an even bigger thrill in the form of Captain Jerry Jackson, a deliciously sexy James Mason), murders a few people (one of Ralph's tenants, her bible-quoting servant Hogarth and Mason-after a couple of attempts, perhaps as payback for her whipping from Mason two years earlier!), all the while pining over Kit (Michael Rennie), the man who "would have married her if he had met her the day before her wedding"- and she ends up shot by Kit, dying in the ultimate act of ironic justice, in his arms as she makes a dying confession of her numerous sins. Sounds like a riot, doesn't it? It is! It's completely outrageous and so, so much fun! I never get bored watching this film. Here's why: -Lockwood's Barbara is just so darn enjoyable to watch. The raven-haired villianess (symbolically clothed in black) sweeps into and ruins young cousin Caroline's life after the girl makes the biggest mistake a pretty young damsel has ever made in pictures; inviting Lockwood to her wedding. Lockwood, after her success as the social-climbing Hesther in The Man In Grey, became Gainsborough's chief villianess, perhaps by virtue of her raven locks and buxom appearance. And she's good here too- the Gainsborough actors could actually act, and it is a credit to their abilities and screen charisma that they make these outlandish plots work, but make them so darn watchable! Trust Barbara at your peril, folks! -James Mason's sexy highwayman. Let it be said that I love Mason- I know that he hated his Gainsborough years, and the terrible scripts he got, but he actually is damn good in these films! Here he is sardonic and witty and even though he may have hated the film (he punched director Arliss on the nose on the first day of filming) he looks as if he is having a good time, spitting out racy lines of dialogue with relish. Those encounters with Lockwood at the inn and by the lakeside in the moonlit are HOT! If I was Barbara I would forget about Rennie altogether, turf her wedding ring back at Ralph (which she never wanted anyway, she never loved him, only his money!) and run off with Jackson! Any normal female would want to be his Doxy for all time... -The set design and costuming. Ah, Maryiot Cells looks lovely and the controversy over the girl's plunging cleavage is always a fun story to tell -The unusually racy dialogue, and it's frank awareness of sex. You've got to love Mason's retort to Barbara when she complains, on their first meeting "Do you always take women by the throat?" "No, I just take them". And it gets better! At the inn, between Barbara and Jackson... Barbara (after Mason takes off his mask!): You remind me of a man I knew Jackson: A lover? Barbara: We met but once...and the moment was not...proficious And when Lockwood starts spending her nights robbing the highways with her lover... Griffith Jones: "I don't like this lying in bed half the day Lockwood: Why should it worry you, as long as I am always unaccompanied?" -Patricia Roc and Jean Kent. Two great actresses. Oh, Lockwood is decent too, but I feel Kent was the most talent of the Gainsborough girls, and, unfortunately the most under-used (she only really gets a chance to shine under the Gainsborough banner in the fun Caravan as a sexy Spanish gypsy girl). Here she gets but two minutes of screen time, but, as always, makes a lasting impression as Mason's original doxy. There is a lovely story about Kent and Mason whilst making the film.... "During The Wicked Lady, we were sitting in this cart going to the execution. They (the producers) wanted me to be pale and wan, and so I didn't have any make-up on. He looked across at me and said, 'You should never wear make-up. You look so wonderful as you are.'" (Jean Kent)And Roc is no slouch either! Noel Coward called her a "complete actress" and she, like De Havilland in Gone With The Wind, brings so much belief and quiet skill to her roles as the second-lead good-girl that you wholly believe her character (Calvert had this quality too). She got the chance to diverge and play the bitch twice at Gainsborough to Lockwood's heroine in Jassy and Love Story but she was always the erstwhile second lead. The girls fare much better than the guys (Mason excluded, he is always great!) here. Jones and Rennie seem swamped by their colourless roles and Lockwood's dominant bitch performance. Maybe Stewart Granger would have worked better in Rennie's role...I'm sure he would have! -The supporting cast. Alymer is a hoot as Hogarth (taking more than a few leafs from Wuthering Heights Joseph), Enid Stamp-Taylor is priceless as Henrietta and the inimitable Martita Hunt is fun as one of the servants, noting sagely (before Barbara's arrival) "Cats have green eyes. I don't like cats". Needless to say, Barbara has green eyes!