HotToastyRag After four nominations for Best Actress, Susan Hayward finally took home an Oscar in 1959 for her bold performance in I Want to Live! She was very good in this film, and there really wasn't any other actress in Hollywood who could have played the part, but I always wished she would have won the Oscar in 1955 for I'll Cry Tomorrow. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better performance in Hollywood history.In this true story that finally won Suzy the gold, she plays Barbara Graham, a coarse woman with a bit of an unsavory past. She falls in with the wrong crowd, and when they're all found at the scene of the crime, she's arrested for murder. She's one tough broad, and won't take her death sentence lying down. The film follows her as she fights for appeals and maintains her innocence. This isn't a feel-good movie, but given the subject matter, it's not really expected to be. It's a bleak black-and-white film, which is perfect because of the black-and-white fate of Suzy. The reason why I Want to Live! is so special and so uniquely Suzy is because she injects a vulnerability into the character instead of making her a one-dimensional tough broad. Yes, Susan has that fantastic low voice and that fantastic shoulder-first walk, but she also breaks down in tears as says goodbye to her infant son.Nominated for Best Director, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, and Sound, this is a universally hailed classic from the 1950s. Even to modern audiences, it's praised as incredibly realistic, often compared to Dead Man Walking. It's rather difficult to watch, though, so even though Suzy won the Oscar for it, it's not one I like to see over and over again. But since she does give an excellent, heart wrenching performance, and since she's my favorite classic actress, I do watch it every couple of years. It's hard to stay away from her beauty, strength, and talent, and since I've only ever seen her in one comedy, I know I'm in for a heavy drama when I pop in a Susan Hayward movie. She really is the queen of comedy; as Rupert Everett says in My Best Friend's Wedding, "The misery, the exquisite tragedy, the Susan Hayward of it all."

Bill-16 Just like the phony and 1/4 truth "Birdman of Alcatraz", "I Want to Live" is Hollywood trying to preach to the simple citizen type Americans.I guess every generation needs to learn just how corrupt and political Hollywood is. They have no room to preach about Morals.Barbara Graham was not only was guilty of Murder by being involved in conspiring to rob Mabel Monohan, she personally murdered the elderly women. The Jury Says So!This is Hollywood's Statement on the horrors of the Death Penalty. I may agree with them, but lying to the American people and the world doesn't help. The Truth Will Out and you end up hurting the cause.Now to the movie, it is actually well done and Hayward certainly deserved her Academy Award. I have been a Simon Oakland fan all my life and this is very first. The other Reviewers covered the excellent acting and riveting ending.. Gripping is my word for the final 1/2hr.Just remember, Hollywood is filled with disgusting rotten people just like any other business. It is just when them businesses try and preach to Us simple folk how we should vote and causes we should support that they overstep. They Should best Keep Their Mouth Shut and just entertain us.

GeoPierpont After watching "The Green Mile", "Monsters Ball", and "Dead Man Walking" I was pretty much convinced that Capital Punishment is beyond evolved societies. This film supported my belief only during the final moments that illustrated very precisely how to prepare a gas chamber for a death sentence. Fascinating, but looks like a decent way to go vs Chemo/Radiation for years.I am not a fan of Hayward and her histrionic performance did not lend well to portraying an innocent woman. The incessant cacophony of avant garde jazz only distracted from the capture of a fallen woman who went way astray in life. I know there are innocents in prison, on death row, etc., but this one-sided operation annoyed me more than instigate sympathy.I cannot recommend this film due to the poor performance of Hayward who supposedly was not a heroin addict but surely acted like one. Too many elements of the film were incongruous. With the strong emphasis on how this is based on actual facts, letters, discussions by a newspaper sensationalist headliner only debased the content vs enhance.If you are on the fence about the Death Penaly watch the three films aforementioned.

Steffi_P Good cinema has rhythm. Most classic cinema moves to the flow of orchestral film music, but for a certain kind of picture in the mid-50s to mid-60s, the images would skip to the modish sounds of bossa nova and free jazz. This isn't the most melodic or listenable music ever created, and often it was used simply to be hip and different. However, I Want to Live! has a jazz score that runs right through the picture, regulating its pace and complementing its relentlessly gritty tone.The picture opens in a jazz club, in a short sequence which has nothing to do with the plot, but sets the scene. From this point on, a musical feel pervades the picture. The director is Robert Wise, an exceptional but seldom recognised filmmaker whose pictures had always been sensitive to rhythm, and would later win Oscars for directing musicals. Wise was an expert when it came to matching music, image and performance. In an early scene with a party aboard a boat, we hear some staccato Latin American music. The frame seems excessively crowded and filled with movement, while the lighting gives numerous shades of grey. The whole thing appears natural, but also looks precisely choreographed to the rhythm of the scene. At other times we get a slow, moody melody, and here the tones are stark and the movements lethargic. Even in scenes without music, there is a complex and eerie sound design of closing doors, photographers' flashes, telephone rings and suchlike, not to mention the sharp vocal delivery. This rhythmic approach, which is always present but never seems overdone, adds character to each moment, gives abrupt changes between scenes, and makes the whole picture fast-moving. Some commentators on Wise's career try to draw a line separating films like this from West Side Story, Sound of Music and so forth, but Wise's style and intention is consistent.But the central pillar in I Want to Live! is of course the captivating performance of Susan Hayward. Hayward's acting is the size of a house, and she absolutely dominates the screen. However it is the littlest things that make this performance work – a tiny flash of her eyes or shrug of her shoulders. These small things are what bring out our sympathy for the character, while it is the powerhouse acting that gives the picture its passion. So overpowering is Hayward, that every other performance becomes somewhat forgettable. Except that is for Simon Oakland, who is rather impressive in his film debut, with a role which is complex because there is often a discrepancy between what his character says and what he is really feeling. Lou Krugman is also very memorable in his small role as Jack Santo, simply because he comes across as genuinely menacing and sadistic. No-one else really stands out, but at least no-one is conspicuously bad, and besides it helps to have a supporting cast that is a little bland because you would not want anyone to upstage Hayward.We will never know for sure, but it is now widely agreed that the real Barbara Graham was in fact guilty, and while this movie never openly commits itself either way, it makes every allowance for the likelihood of her being innocent. However, the point of I Want to Live! was probably not to exonerate Barbara Graham, it was instead to demonstrate the horror and inhumanity of the death penalty. What matters is that we are convinced of the humanity of the character, and the desolateness of the situation. The ins and outs of the case are never really clearly defined, whereas the tone and force of the picture most definitely is.