CHICAGO JOE AND THE SHOWGIRL is based on a true story, "the Cleft Chin Murder," which dominated British headlines for a time in 1944. A teenaged showgirl, Georgina Grayson (Emily Lloyd), meets an American serviceman, Ricky Allen (Kiefer Sutherland), and the two embark on a wild affair.
Movie-mad Georgina envisions herself as a glamorous gun moll to Ricky's imagined mobster kingpin. She goads him to commit one crime after another for her. The fun of appropriating an Army truck and stealing a fur coat escalates nightmarishly into the murders of a lady hitchhiker (Alexandra Pigg)
and a cabbie (John Junkin). The pair are found out and tried. The lovers come to discover each other's duplicity: he is an Army deserter named Karl Hulten, while she is, in reality, Elizabeth Maud Jones, a stripper. Although she is eventually granted a reprieve, he is found guilty and becomes the
only American serviceman ever to be executed by the British.
According to producer Tim Bevan, there was very little fictionalization in the film. It covers the six-day crime spree that took place after the couple's chance meeting in a Hammersmith cafe. Bevan and screenwriter David Yallop have, however, taken wild license with the motivational aspects of the
story. They have chosen the rather heavy-handed device of showing Ricky and Georgina at regular intervals in their fantasy roles as mobster and moll. London turns into Chicago, the stolen truck becomes a snazzy roadster, Ricky's fatigues metamorphose into a flashy zoot suit, and Georgina appears
as Veronica Lake, blonde bangs and all, while Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" booms on the soundtrack. Unfortunately, this too-literal interpretation of their fantasies serves only to distance the viewer from the carefully developed wartime atmosphere. The heedlessness of youth, Georgina's basic
shallowness and acquisitiveness, and the alienation Ricky feels as a none-too-admired Yank in wartime London might instead have been further developed in the interests of credibility. Ricky and Georgina come off as marginally attractive ciphers; it's hard to believe they'd commit such dastardly
deeds. Indeed, the moonlit scene of the woman's murder is so harrowing that it throws the entire film off kilter. Gemma Jackson's art direction also seems wrong. She gets the gritty filth of wartime London down all right, but goes overboard with matte and process shot effects--notably, the
nocturnal trysting place set amid the rubble, and a very pictorial Luftwaffe--that resemble something out of a Vincent Minnelli film or DICK TRACY, at least. The framing device of Georgina's fantasy appearance at her own premiere is also unnecessary. A more documentary approach to the subject, as
in Mike Newell's DANCE WITH A STRANGER, would have been preferable.
With such sketchily developed characters, real stars were needed to make a go of this. Try as they might, Sutherland and Lloyd merely come across as baby-faced innocents. He is stalwart enough, but rather dull, failing to suggest either the implicit danger in Ricky or a thwarted romantic quality
that would have made the character more involving. Lloyd's imperishable life spirit makes her one of the most naturally ingratiating young actresses on the screen, but she lacks the range to play a properly heartless noir bitch. The fatalistic opacity of evil that made Barbara Stanwyck's
performance in DOUBLE INDEMNITY and Rita Hayworth's in LADY FROM SHANGHAI so mesmerizingly sexy is beyond Lloyd. She gives Georgina's eleventh hour betrayal of Ricky a brave try, but nothing we have seen previous to this prepares us for her snivelling actions. On the other hand, Patsy Kensit, who
has a small role as Ricky's jilted fiancee, manages to hint at more complexity in her character than is scripted. (The film might have been more successful had she and Lloyd exchanged parts.) The best performance is actually delivered by Pigg, whose lifelike portrayal of the hapless Violet blasts
right through the labored artifice. (Violence, adult situations, sexual situations, alcohol abuse, profanity.) leave a comment
