BLACK WIDOW is an all-star Hollywood film noir shot in vibrant colour and featuring a starring role for ageing starlet Ginger Rogers. The story is about a pretty young woman who falls for a big-shot theatre producer, causing the finger of suspicion to fall on him when she's found murdered. The cast are decent here and Van Heflin does fine with his 'wronged man' material, but the main problem is with the sluggish pace. There are too many peripheral characters and sub-plots that merely murky the waters, and for a murder mystery there's absolutely no suspense. Still, at least it looks good.

Copyright 1954 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Roxy: 27 October 1954. U.S. release: November 1954. U.K. release: March 1955. Australian release: 28 May 1955. Sydney opening at the Regent. 8,520 feet. 95 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Murder mystery in which a Broadway producer is suspected of strangling a girl he had befriended. A moderately ingenious but disagreeable story, tamely developed. — "Sight & Sound". NOTES: Fox's 18th CinemaScope feature and the first to return only a modest profit (on what was a very modest investment at that). CinemaScope was already losing its box-office lure.COMMENT: A murder mystery in CinemaScope certainly sounds novel and promising, but alas this movie gives the idea such an indifferent work-out it's impossible to reach any conclusion as to the Scope screen's effectiveness in dramatizing this sort of entertainment. The whodunit aspects are indifferently, even perfunctorily handled, and the characters are so one-dimensional that little if any suspense is generated. True, Ginger Rogers plays her vindictive actress with a certain amount of bite and sparkle, and Peggy Ann Garner is briefly effective as the "All About Eve" clone and victim, but the rest of the players come nowhere near these standards. George Raft just rattles off his lines, while Van Heflin as usual seems to go out of his way to be plain dull. Reginald Gardiner is handed some pungent lines, but he is so unbelievable that his observations count for little. In fact, all the pretentious allusions in the dialogue generally fall flat. Production values are minor, CinemaScope being poorly utilized, while a most incompatible and obvious stand-in pretends to be Van Heflin in the New York location shots.

I greatly enjoyed this Cinemascope, Stereo-Sound romp, but mainly as a Guilty Pleasure, as it's a film very much of it's time, with mismatched acting styles, lush, unbelievable sets, a central premise that doesn't make much sense (lending your expensive apartment to a just-met down-and-out writer while your wife's away),and an early attempt to make visual sense of the then-new wide-screen process.Why do I like it? Ginger Rogers is way over the top, popping on and off screen with snappy diva one-liners, like Margo Channing on pep pills; Peggy Ann Garner plays a subversive Lolita, crazy-seductive and irresistible, and you can even spot Aaron Spelling towards the end in a bit part as a theatre employee. The palette is loaded with pastel colors so popular in the 1950's, and the whole thing is sort of a mild domestic whodunit whipped up into an anemic Douglas Sirk confection. Great it ain't, but because of Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney (who has very little to do but does it beautifully) and Reginald Gardner, I found it greatly entertaining.

So imagine a film noir. Now, imagine that film noir as a technicolor Cinemascope production, and you have Black Widow. A certainly interesting, but just passable noir about a Broadway producer framed for a murder he didn't commit. Fleeing from the police, he picks up clues about the victim, and realizes his friends are not what they seem (of course). While this is pretty to look at, unfortunately, once you figure out what the cops are doing. the suspense disappears somewhat, and completely collapses at the end when we do find out the real murderer as it's almost presented as an anticlimax. Still worth a look though for it's amazing photography.