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The Wicked Lady

The Wicked Lady

  • Status: Released
  • 15-11-1945
  • Runtime: 104 min
  • Score: 6.4
  • Vote count: 32

A married woman finds new thrills as a masked robber on the highways.

Margaret Lockwood

Barbara Worth

James Mason

Captain Jerry Jackson

Patricia Roc

Caroline

Griffith Jones

Sir Ralph Skelton

Michael Rennie

Kit Locksby

Felix Aylmer

Hogarth

Enid Stamp-Taylor

Lady Henrietta Kingsclere

Jean Kent

Jackson's Doxy

Francis Lister

Lord Kingsclere

Martita Hunt

Cousin Agatha

Beatrice Varley

Aunt Moll

Amy Dalby

Aunt Doll

David Horne

Martin Worth

Emrys Jones

Ned Cotterill

Helen Goss

Mistress Betsy

Muriel Aked

Mrs. Munce

Aubrey Mallalieu

Doctor

Ivor Barnard

Clergyman

Peter Madden

Hawker

Hilda Campbell-Russell

Highway Victim

Diane Hart

Minor Role (uncredited)

Vincent Holman

Elderly Squire (uncredited)

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