THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING
T. it.: “L’altalena di velluto rosso”; Scen.: Walter Reisch, Charles Brachett; F.: Milton Krasner; M.: William Mace; Scgf.: Maurice Ransford, Lyle R. Wheeler; Cost.: Charles LeMaire; Mu.: Leigh Harline, orchestrata da: Edward B. Powell; Int.: Ray Milland (Stanford White), Joan Collins (Evelyn Nesbit Thaw), Farley Granger (Harry K. Thaw), Luther Adler (Delphin Delmas), Cornelia Otis Skinner (Mrs. Thaw), Glenda Farrell (Mrs. Nesbit), Frances Fuller (Mrs. White), Philip Reed (Robert Collier), Gale Robbins (Gwen Arden), James Lorimer (McCaleb), John Hoyt (William Travers Jerome), Harvey Stephens (Dr. Hollingshead), Emile Meyer (Greenbacher), Richard Travis (Charles Dana Gibson), Harry Seymour (Arthur), Ainslie Pryor (Sport Donnally), Kay Hammond (Nellie), Betty Caulfield (Alice), Karolee Kelly (Margaret), Jack Raine (Mr. Finley); Prod.: Charles Brachett per 20th Century Fox; 35mm. D.: 109’.
Film Notes
Excluding his first film Child of Divorce, a superb and little-known epigraph to his entire body of work, this is the first time that Fleischer has moved completely outside the framework of a traditional Hollywood genre. The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing was also the first of his criminal studies based on true stories (like Compulsion, 1959; The Boston Strangler, 1968; 10 Rillington Place, 1978), which over the years came to represent a specific, autonomous genre within his work […]. The sets, costumes, acting style, and reconstruction of the atmosphere are all the fruit of lengthy preliminary research and belong to an investigative effort that, at the moment the drama is played, give it its synthetic force and its maximun effectiveness. CinemaScope, used here for the third time by Fleischer, exalts these elements. Together with Preminger and Anthony Mann, Fleischer was one of the most enthusiastic pioneers of the format. At the center of the story, quite audacious for its time, lies a magnificent portrait of a woman.
Jacques Lourcelles, Dictionnaire du cinéma, Paris, Laffont, 1992