I WANT TO LIVE

US, 1958, 120 minutes, Black and white.
Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent, Theodore Bikel.
Directed by Robert Wise.

I Want to Live is the film for which Susan Hayward won an Oscar. She also won the Golden Globe. It is a very fine and strong performance, one of many from Susan Hayward who, a few years earlier, had appeared in the Oscar-nominated biography of Lillian Roth, I’ll Cry Tomorrow. (The film was remade as a rather glossy television movie in the 1970s with Lindsay Wagner in the central role.)

The film is the story of Barbara Graham, a good-time girl who frequented a lot of bars in San Francisco. She gets mixed up with a couple of men and they commit a murder. Thinking that she was helping the police, they name her as the murderer. Framed by them, she seems to have been framed also by the police, talking with an undercover cop who then is a prosecution witness against her. She is sentenced to San Quentin, to be executed – and this execution was carried out in the prison. The final credits are over the actual prison.

Barbara Graham’s story is slight and sleazy in many ways, but Susan Hayward brings great strength to the role. She is stronger as victim, framed by the men she trusted as well as the police. The execution scene is harrowing – and the credits finish outside San Quentin where she was executed.

This film was an early contribution, from the late 50s, to the movement against capital punishment. Later films include The Execution of Richard Graham, Dead Man Walking, Last Dance with Sharon Stone.

The film was directed by Robert Wise who had begun his career in the 1940s as an editor. Given the opportunity to work on small-budget films, he made a number of horror films for Val Lewton in the 1940s including The Curse of the Cat People and The Body Snatcher(*s?). As he began to make more solid dramas, including The Day the Earth Stood Still, he moved to big budgets with the coming of Cinemascope (Helen of Troy). He made a continuous succession of films to the mid-60s including West Side Story for which he won an Oscar and this was repeated for The Sound of Music in 1965. He continued to direct for some years, making Star Trek, the Motion Picture in 1979 and Rooftops in 1989.

1. The impact of the title for this film? The basic drive for survival? Audience sympathy for a person striving for life? The relevance of the title for this film as regards capital punishment, argument for or against?

2. What stance did the film take on capital punishment? Did it give intellectual arguments for and against, or emotional arguments, or both? Was the film fair in its presentation? Is it important to present someone striving for life to argue well for capital punishment or against it?

3. How convincing a character was Barbara Graham? As portrayed by Susan Hayward? The background of her life, the good time girl? How real was she in these sequences? Did her background explain her sufficiently, her easy life, the scenes in the bars, her marriage, her love? Her role as a mother? did this change her? How much was she a victim of circumstances the instability of her husband? Her presence at the crime? The truth about it and her telling the story? Audience sympathy when she was tricked by the policeman into a confession for alibi? The paper campaign against her? Was it credible that she would become so hard and bitter? The effect of the several times she was to go to the gas chamber? Her reactions to such people as the nurse, the chaplain? to Ed Montgomery and the psychologist? To the Lawyers? What was the purpose of her life?

4. Did the plot have enough explanation as to what had happened? The crime itself, the questions of alibis, the roles of the lawyers, the papers, the rejection of appeals? How important was this rejection of appeal and the audience not knowing the various reasoning which went on for them?

5. How important was the portrayal of the criminal environment? the dreams of criminals like Barbara, their hopes, the way that they could easily be busted eg. Barbara in the bar, the hardship, the inadequacy in coping with the problems such as family, husband, the press, court sympathies, death?

6. How interesting were the court sequences? Were they fair? Barbara Graham's behaviour during the trial? Her hardness, her desperation?

7. What point was being made by the paper's influence on public opinion? Montgomery's campaign against her? Why did he change? Was this credible? The irony of its being too late?

8. Why did Barbara respond so well to the psychologist? What help did he give her? The change for rehabilitation? His untimely death?

9. The function of the police in the film? Were they presented fairly? Their behaviour in the courts?

10. What impact did the reality of the gas chamber have? The prolonging of agony as Barbara went and waited? The detailed presentation of the chamber itself and how the gas worked? This as an a argument concerning capital punishment?

11. How important were the techniques of the film for making the points convincing? How sincere was the film in searching for the truth? How much was it a box office film?