Walk on the Wild Side

During the Depression, Dove Linkhorn travels from Texas to New Orleans looking for Hallie, the woman he left years ago. He finds her in a brothel run by Jo Courtney. Jo has no intention of letting her go, and the reason is not commercial. Edward Dmytryk directs. Laurence Harvey plays Dove, Capucine plays Hallie, Barbara Stanwyck plays Jo, with Jane Fonda and Anne Baxter also in the cast. What gets discussed now is Stanwyck's character. Jo's interest in Hallie is never stated and never hidden either, and with the Production Code still in force this is one of the few instances of Hollywood putting a lesbian character on screen at all. Its most famous stretch, though, is the first three minutes. In Saul Bass's title sequence a black cat walks the street and fights another cat over Elmer Bernstein's score. Those titles entered the history of graphic design independently of the film. The source is Nelson Algren's novel. Algren loathed the result, and his relationship with the studio turned into open hostility. Who it is for: viewers who like early sixties Hollywood melodrama and Stanwyck. Who it is not for: anyone who knows the book will find the adaptation heavily softened, and Harvey's character is the weakest link in it.