Gordon Douglas's Sylvia (1965)

Don't try to see all the films I directed, that would turn you off movies completely.  I have a large family to support and I work on an interesting project only occasionally.
--Gordon Douglas

I've written several times about the films of Gordon Douglas, a craftsman who is interested in his characters' roles in society.  He's worked in all genres, some like his science-fiction films the best (Them, 1954), the films that deal with possible future problems; others like his Westerns (Yellowstone Kelly, 1959), that look to the past; some prefer his modern-day crime films (Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, 1950, a year in which Douglas made six films).  Sylvia is a film about the investigation into a woman's past for the sake of her future that is very much of its 1965 present.

Private investigator Alan Macklin (George Maharis) looks into Sylvia's (Carroll Baker)past at the behest of wealthy Frederick Sommers (Peter Lawford), who is about to marry her.  In a movie influenced by Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) and Otto Preminger's Laura (1944) he digs deeply into her background and appears to fall in love with her before he even meets her.  He tells Sommers that he found out nothing, though he has learned that she was raped by her father, abused by a minister and saved her money working as a B-girl and a prostitute to become a poet and raiser of prize roses. After Macklin and Sylvia meet the film opens up from claustrophobic studio sets to natural locations of grass and trees, emphasizing the expansion of their lives. Once Sylvia finds out that Macklin is working for Sommers she confesses to Sommers and the film ends with a kiss between Macklin and Sylvia.

In terms of past and future Douglas uses a number of fine older character actors --Aldo Ray, Joane Dru, Ann Southern, Edmond O'Brien, et al.-- to represent the past, while Maharis and Baker perhaps were meant to represent the future, though Baker, who trained at the Actors Studio,  was never able to break out of sexpot roles while Maharis stuck mostly to low-budget films and television (Baker is now 87, Marharis 90).  The themes of Sylvia continue to resonate, from income inequality to the roles of women in society.