- Gerd Oswald's Crime of Passion starts off on a high note, with San Francisco newspaper columnist Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) cleverly utilizing her advice column to make contact with a woman wanted for murder. Although police captain Alidos (Royal Dano) doesn't think much of Kathy's methods or her progressive-minded career, his partner Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden) is considerably more impressed. Fast forward a bit and Bill and Kathy are married and living in Los Angeles, where Bill's police precinct is located. When they mingle with the other cops (Robert Griffin, Dennis Cross) and their wives (Peg La Centra, Jean Howell, Virginia Grey), the men play poker and drone on about pensions while the women blather about cream cheese and olive, their weight, and the people they admire most.
- The police wives all agree that Police Inspector Anthony Pope (Raymond Burr) and his wife Alice (Fay Wray) are the best kind of people, so Kathy takes it upon herself to meet Alice. That she does so by stalking Alice for several days and staging a car accident is the first clue that Kathy may be more conniving than the other police wives. Always one to sniff out wrongdoing, Inspector Pope connects with Kathy, sharing old case files of women who committed crimes of passion. Maybe there's a suggestion that the two of them have more in common than merely their interest in crime. When similar insinuations show up in an anonymous note, Bill storms off to sock Captain Alidos in the eye. At this point in the film, the men are more criminally passionate than the women, but all of that is about to change.
- Unfortunately, that crossroads also marks precisely when Crime of Passion becomes a considerably less interesting movie. When Kathy is struggling to escape the utter vapidity of the other police housewives while simultaneously pulling strings to get Bill promoted, she's a fascinating character. When that string-pulling transforms into murder, though, it's simply a bridge too far. Stanwyck, Hayden, and Burr are excellent as always, with Burr's incisive interrogation forming an amusing counterpoint to his Perry Mason persona. Oswald's direction is capable, and the movie features a few really excellent montages. Oddly, I expect that the cream cheese and olive conversation is going to stick with me longer than a lot of the other details from this film.
