I think it is generally acknowledged that Errol Flynn's best film work was in those films that combined his charm and his athletic abilities, be they swashbucklers, boxing films, or westerns. But as he got older Flynn was determined to prove his acting abilities. He could act when he was generally interested in the film he appeared in, but he was frequently willing to try to do a film that was unusual. This did not always work too well. He made such interesting failures as THE SISTERS with Bette Davis, where he was a newspaper reporter in turn of the century San Francisco, who had a wanderjahr that interfered with his marriage. The film wasn't bad, but his part was weak - the antithesis of the type he usually played so well. In the late 1940s to 1950 he tried three films to broaden his scope of acting: CRY WOLF, THAT FORSYTE WOMAN, and SILVER RIVER. Only the last one, a western where he played a man who was carried away by ambitious and greed so that he becomes relatively unsympathetic, was successful. THAT FORSYTE WOMAN (with Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon) was interesting (Flynn as Soames Forsythe was interesting casting, but he was too stiff - Eric Porter's memorable Soames in the first BBC version of the Galsworthy stories in the 1960s was far more human). CRY WOLF, the present film, was Flynn's only real attempt at the noir style of movie. As such it begins well, but collapses due to a poor script.
Barbara Stanwyck has married Richard Basehart, the nephew of Flynn, before the movie began. Flynn, Basehart, Jerome Cowan, and Geraldine Brooks are the scions of a "Kennedy" style family, with money and political power (Cowan is a U.S. Senator). But Basehart has vanished, and Stanwyck, besides trying to prove her marriage, is determined to find her husband. And here she keeps running into Flynn's suspicious behavior. He seems very unsympathetic to her wishes, and quite cold most of the time. As for helping her locate Basehart, he keeps on throwing up roadblocks.
The problem is that having set a good stage for a film which would have been confronting Stanwyck's heroine with Flynn's villain, the script fell apart. It turns out Flynn is interested in protecting the family's name and it's members from outside scrutiny. In particular Basehart and Brooks, who are somewhat strange. This change in the script was meant to enable Stanwick and Flynn to gradually fall in love and end up together, but it smashed the suspense that such a film should generate, and it ruined Flynn from having a potentially interesting negative part. Actually his performance in SILVER RIVER was far more consistent, and even his Soames retains the audience's lack of sympathy to the end. In CRY WOLF the audience gets confused - should we hiss Flynn or cheer him on? It would have been better all around if the screenplay writers had let us hiss him to the end.
Barbara Stanwyck has married Richard Basehart, the nephew of Flynn, before the movie began. Flynn, Basehart, Jerome Cowan, and Geraldine Brooks are the scions of a "Kennedy" style family, with money and political power (Cowan is a U.S. Senator). But Basehart has vanished, and Stanwyck, besides trying to prove her marriage, is determined to find her husband. And here she keeps running into Flynn's suspicious behavior. He seems very unsympathetic to her wishes, and quite cold most of the time. As for helping her locate Basehart, he keeps on throwing up roadblocks.
The problem is that having set a good stage for a film which would have been confronting Stanwyck's heroine with Flynn's villain, the script fell apart. It turns out Flynn is interested in protecting the family's name and it's members from outside scrutiny. In particular Basehart and Brooks, who are somewhat strange. This change in the script was meant to enable Stanwick and Flynn to gradually fall in love and end up together, but it smashed the suspense that such a film should generate, and it ruined Flynn from having a potentially interesting negative part. Actually his performance in SILVER RIVER was far more consistent, and even his Soames retains the audience's lack of sympathy to the end. In CRY WOLF the audience gets confused - should we hiss Flynn or cheer him on? It would have been better all around if the screenplay writers had let us hiss him to the end.