JEOPARDY

US, 1953, 70 minutes, Black and white.
Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Ralph Meeker, Lee Acker.
Directed by John Sturges.

Jeopardy is a short melodrama concerning a husband, wife and son who go to an isolated part of Mexico for a holiday where the father's leg is pinioned by a heavy support from a broken jetty. The wife goes for help and encounters a murderer on the run. The film is well made and acted and is an effective minor film. Director John Sturges has since gone on to make action spectacles like Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at OK Corral, Ice Station Zebra and Marooned.

1. The realism of the plot or whether it was far-fetched?

2 . The happiness of the family and their going for the holiday?

3 . The behaviour of the family: - the mother's panic as she went for help; - the father's patience as the tide rose and his trying not to frighten his son; - the son's trying to help?

4. The convict - his callousness and disregard for life; the way the wife persuades him to come; why he helped at all -was it just to get the husband's clothes or the wife's affection?

5. The moralising by the wife at the end about what she would be prepared to do to save her husband, and about reading in the papers of the convict's death. Her judging him as evil?

6. The techniques used in the film:
- the holiday mood;
- accident;
- panic;
- rescue?

7. The use of cross-cutting from husband to wife to show the passing of time and to create anxiety?

8. The screenplay's preparation of details for the panic at the end, e.g. the husband locking the garage door and the wife going back: - the discussion about the isolation of the place and the fishing boats going past (and thinking they were tourists waving); - the use of the jack and breaking it so that when the wife has a puncture there is no jack; - low tide and the tide rising; - showing us the dead man at the garage, but the wife's not knowing the man she asks help from is a murderer; - the Mexicans understanding she wanted a rope only after she had driven off?

9. Within its small ambitions, was the film a success? Why?