Marked Woman

This was Davis' return to the screen after her own legal battle with the studio to get meatier roles. She got one here, and she gives it her all. [09 Jul 2006, p.32]

A near-classic, "Woman" is let down only by Bacon's sluggish helming. [15 Aug 1996, p.9A]

This hard-hitting crime film, based upon the notorious career of one-time New York City vice lord Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was a tour de force for Davis who had just battled Warner Bros. to a standstill in a contract dispute.

Marked Woman has no romance to sell. This is a hard-hitting yarn of five girls working for a vice king.

What really makes the film stand out is its focus on the women, identifying Davis and her girlfriends as the unsung heroines of a cruel economic and social trap; even at their moment of triumph, the girls' future is defined by an uncertain and unsettling fog.

The film has the tawdry simplicities of many of the 30s movies that were built out of headline stories, but it also has more impact than most of the melodramas played out in more elevated surroundings.

Marked Woman could easily have become a maudlin piece. It totters every now and then on the brink of bathos and of melodramatic hokum. But invariably it is snatched back by Lloyd Bacon's direction or by the honesty of its players.