A black widow spider is a species of arachnid that devours its mate after they copulate. This film opens on the image of one of these spiders in a web and explains that bit of behavior and how they got that name. The puzzling thing, then, is why this movie is named Black Widow, has this opening bit of data dump, and then the story is not about that at all. This is not a movie about a woman killing her mate or any other man, for that matter. While the character of Nancy Ordway (Peggy Ann Garner) can be said to be weaving a web of deceit and affairs that ultimately leads to her own murder, that metaphor is stretched a bit too thin in this film. Perhaps it was better matched in the original Patrick Quentin novel.
Black Widow is a film noir version of All About Eve. It looks at an aspiring young woman, Nancy Ordway, who has moved to New York City from Savannah to become a writer. At a cocktail party, she meets Peter Denver (Van Heflin), a renowned Broadway producer, as well as celebrated, and vain, actress Carlotta “Lottie” Marin (Ginger Rogers). Peter offers to take Nancy to dinner, insisting on it being platonic, and then later gives her permission to use his apartment during the day for her writing. When he returns home one evening with his wife, Iris (Gene Tierney), they find Nancy hanging in the bathroom, presumably from suicide. As information starts to get out about Nancy’s whereabouts and actions in the days leading up to her death, including the revelation that she was pregnant at the time of death, it soon becomes obvious that this was no suicide and Peter is the most likely murder suspect.
In an interesting change of pace, George Raft is here playing Detective Bruce. Raft was notorious for playing gangsters and other shady characters so it is nice to see him in a lighter role. Reportedly he was delighted to be offered this part and made sure he was fully prepared for every day’s shoot. He’s good in the part, too, shaking off the typecasting and delivering a somewhat muted, yet still hard-nosed performance. His dry humor creeps in from time to time, too, letting you know that he is not stupid and knows more than he is sometimes letting on.
Unfortunately, for a film filled to the brim with big-name stars, this one doesn’t always use them the best of their abilities. Gene Tierney is underutilized, with only a few moments where she gets much of anything to do. Ginger Rogers is doing her best with some poorly written dialogue, too, and is relegated to a stereotypical snobbish Actress with a capital A. Reginald Gardiner comes across a little better as her husband, always living in the shadow of his much more successful wife. His character really comes into his own in the final act when a lot of important information comes to light.
As a mystery film, this one is merely mediocre. It is elevated by a handful of good performances, especially Heflin and Garner, who is surprisingly good though she drops out of the picture early on. The mystery, itself, is competently told, though it falls back on a very common noir trope of jealousy and infidelity. The use of CinemaScope and DeLuxe Color adds to the film’s atmosphere, illustrating the scenes, especially nighttime in the city, like a beautiful painting; It adds to the overall allure of the film. This is an average noir feature that is elevated to above-average status because of all of these elements working together. 1954 - 95 minutes
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