Sunday night after a hectic, busy, and fun-filled weekend playing games at Kingdom-Con I relaxed by watching Woman on the Run  a film noir  currently streaming on the service Kanopy. This is a film I had never heard of and pretty much decided to give it a go on a whim.

Ann Sheridan plays Eleanor Johnson and her husband Frank, while waling the dog late in the night, becomes witness to a mob murder of a witness and informant. Frank, a target for the killer because he can identify him, and because the police proved incapable of protecting the murder victim, is unwilling to trust his life to the police, takes to the streets of San Francisco hiding from both the authorities and the killer. Though their marriage is failing Eleanor starts hunting for Frank with the police and the killer dogging her heels aided only by Legget, a nosey yellow journalism reporting looking for a scandalous story. As Eleanor sifts through the clues of her husband’s life trying to work out where he might be hiding she discovers that their marriage is not what she had assumed it to be.

Woman on the Run,  though she is more hunting than running, is a terrific, taunt, thriller with a second act twist that puts the entire second half of the film onto a roller coaster of suspense. The real star of the movie is the sharp dialog that is filled with character and style. Carried principally by Ann Sheridan and Dennis O’Keefe as Legget, the film has more character development and transformation than many movie today and while it suffers from some ham-handed medical fantasy issues to create an additional sub-plot the main story holds together and is populated with colorful memorable characters. (I was quite pleased that the producers and director avoided ‘yellow face’ for the few Asian speaking parts.) The climatic ending is truly engaging and had me, late Sunday after a packed weekend, night fully awake and involved.

Apparently this film at one time had been thought to have been lost but now thanks to the Noir Foundation it has been restored, though at one point a still is used for a reaction shot, and I can heartily recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of this classic genre.