The Wicked Lady (1945)

By John Chard

I never could resist anything that belonged to somebody else. The Wicked Lady is directed by Leslie Arliss and Arliss adapts the screenplay from Magdalen King-Hall's novel. It stars Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie, Felix Aylmer and Enid Stamp-Taylor. Music is by Louis Levy and cinematography by Jack E. Cox. Plot finds Lockwood as the wicked lady of the title, a woman who has absolutely no guilt in stealing her friend's man, in cheating, gambling and much much worse... An absolute riot out of Gainsborough Pictures' juicy melodrama period, pic finds the studio pushing one of their female lead characters to a devilish edge. Here we have Lady Barbara Skelton (Lockwood) pushing way over the boundaries of social acceptability, all while deliciously thumbing her nose at feminine stereotypes. She has the men dangling from her strings of puppetry power, regardless of if they are morons or the ones who would happily give her the world. Things go up a further gear once Mason's dandy highwayman joins the fray, for Skelton and Jackson seem a match made in rouge heaven. But there are twists and turns throughout, some truly surprising sequences, plenty of racy thunder for 1945 (laughably the pic was edited in America as the Hays Code objected to Lockwood's cleavage) - mind you it is a sight to behold, no wonder Captain Jackson slides in for a good snog every chance he gets! Unsurprisingly the era of film making dictated there has to be some sort of moral ethic in how the picture finishes, and yet it's actually not disappointing. There's a noirish kink to it, a sort of society sick joke getting back at the woman who has so readily flipped the bird at the society around her. Cast are bang on form, so much so it would be unfair to single one of them out (ok, maybe Mason since his gallows shenanigans is something to be joyful about), while Arliss (The Man in Grey) blends the various larks, lust and ligatures with consummate skill. 8/10