Shockproof
The combination of two filmmakers as distinctive as Samuel Fuller and Douglas Sirk would have made for a much better film than SHOCKPROOF (1949, TCM, YouTube) had Columbia Pictures not softened most of the rough edges of Fuller’s script. He wrote about a parole officer (Cornel Wilde) who becomes obsessed with a murderess (Patricia Knight, aka Mrs. Wilde) under his supervision. He tries to keep her from the gambler boyfriend (John Baragrey) for whom she had killed, gets her a job caring for his blind mother (Esther Minciotti) and, when she shoots a man to protect him, goes on the lam with her., The film still has a strong sense of the forces that drive Wilde from the straight and narrow and a wonderful bit of irony at the end that I can’t reveal. But it also has a hokey ending forced on Sirk and Fuller by the studio. Sirk hated it so much he left Columbia and briefly returned to Germany.
Sirk’s influence can be seen in an opening sequence that introduces Knight by following her picture hat as she adopts a new look and goes for her first check-in with Wilde (in one L.A.’s best. locations, The Bradbury Building). He also makes Wilde’s family home another character in the film (as he did with the family homes in ALL I DESIRE, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, THERE’S ALWAYS TOMORROW and WRITTEN ON THE WIND). He tends to favor the story’s women, getting strong performances from Knight (she gives good regret), Minciotti, Ann Shoemaker as a police psychiatrist and Claire Clarkson as Knight and Wilde’s neighbor.
