Woman of Straw

Hardly a feather in the cap of anyone involved, the film starts out well enough, but the last half degenerates into complete implausibility.

Woman of Straw, which was by no means a sparkling production or masterful mystery-thriller, did verge on Hitchcock territory. [30 Nov 2003, p.9]

Director Basil Dearden seems, here, to have temporarily misplaced the vigorous insight that has earned him some top credits. Best that can be said of Straw [from the novel by Catherine Arley] is that it looks handsome. But the film gets bogged down by stilted dialog and by the situations.

Despite the fancy trappings laid on by the respected old producer-director team of Michael Relph and Basil Dearden, this handsomely colored exercise is the kind of pseudo-Victorian nonsense that Alfred Hitchcock long ago laid to rest.