I Want To Live [1958] [DVD] [1943]

Graham died in the gas chamber convicted of murdering an elderly widow named Mabel Monahan, but she may have been framed for the murder by two acquaintances who were trying to save their own skins. There has been much discussion about Graham's trial and execution, and her guilt is still in doubt.

The movie treads the issues carefully and although it maintains that Graham was perhaps wholly innocent of the crime for which she was executed, it also portrays the woman as a definite "loose canon." She was a naughty girl, and had a smart mouth; she was distrespectful of the law and got off on committing other crimes such as prostitution, perjury, and writing bad checks.

But did she deserve to be put to death for a crime, where the evidence was circumstantial at best? Perhaps it was her shady past that ultimately worked against her. Already prejudged by the media and also by the court of public opinion, Graham found herself with very few sympathic to her cause. Bad legal representation also contributed to her fate.

Directed by Robert Wise, I Want to Live! is powerful and provocative, and remarkably effective, not just for Haywards wild, and gutsy performance,but also because it manages to combine in equal elements the styles of hard-boiled noir, gashouse melodrama, and courtroom potboiler. It's intense, manic, and for two whole hours the drama and the hystrionics just don't let up.

Wise is content to let Hayward take the film in her teeth from the moment she appears and not let it go until she collapses defeated in the gas chamber two hours later. Obviously he's told Hayward to run with it and she did, turning in one of the best dramatic performances in the history of cinema.

The early scenes fluctuate with a jazzy energy that puts across the wild life that Barbara Graham led. Up-tempo music permeates throughout, providing ample opportunities for Hayward to work herself into a drunken and wild frenzy as she parties with her friends in Tijuana.

Hayward's star entrance is particularly breathtaking: The shot opens on a dingy hotel room, Hayward sits up into the frame, smoking in bed. She looks around and then passes the cigarette to a man's hand that has just appeared on the right edge of the frame. It's a small moment, but it says so much about her character and about the tone of what is to come.

Most disturbing are the film's final scenes where Wise offsets the ups and downs of Graham's death row stay with extended scenes of the preparation of the gas chamber for Graham's execution. It's grisly and unsettling and whatever your views of the death penalty are, these scenes will stay with you long after the movie has finished.

But I Want to Live! is so much more than just a biopic of a misunderstood and wayward woman. The film also becomes a condemnation of the American judicial system that forces the audience to watch as the possibly innocent Graham is railroaded, by the demands of the plot and by justice, into a death sentence. The police successfully entrap her whilst she is in prison, and in desperation, she gives a false confession. Torn apart by the press, her fellow inmates, and those she considered her friends, Graham finds little comfort in others.

The film also cleverly avoids falling into sappy melodrama, even when Graham's child is brought to visit and she bursts into unadulterated tears. Hayward manages to maintain a steely and resolute vigor and since she was so headstrong at the film's start, the traumatizing effect of the death sentence becomes evident in her utter defeat.

The damning condemnation of the media, who latch onto her case with sensationalizing vigor, and immediately judge her as guilty, still feels just as relevant today as it did in the 1950's. That Wise can make this material, like its heroine; fall so far so fast and so hard, makes I Want to Live! a totally sensational and profoundly important movie; and it's a film that is wholly unlike anything else being made at the time. Mike Leonard October 05.