Born To Be Bad (1950)

Directed by Nicholas Ray. Written by Edith Sommer

Wicked characters are fun, and unrepentant ones even better. The shamelessness, the guile, the superhuman delusion, the gleam in the eye whereby they ensnare their prey. It’s addictive to watch, and when the direction matches the wicked behavior, it can make up for a lot of shortcomings. 

Nicholas Ray’s Born To Be Bad is, as the title suggests, about a certain someone who seems born under a villainous star. Christabel is her name, played with snake-in-the-grass gumption by Joan Fontaine, and she’s recently arrived in San Francisco where she’s to live with her uncle’s assistant while she completes business school. 

The assistant in question, Donna (Joan Leslie, full of grace even in adversity) is engaged to wealthy man Curtis (Zachary Scott) and despite her innocent appearance, it’s not long before Christabel begins wedging herself between the lovers. The only person who’s onto Christabel from the start is writer Nick (Robert Ryan) but he’s helpless to stop the hurricane that is a baby-faced assassin like Christabel. Their troubled relationship might still be her undoing. 

Christabel manipulates just about everyone and even when someone confronts her, her smile is akin to a cornered dog’s bared fangs, the corner of her lips suggesting she’d love to sink her teeth into you and that she’s getting a real kick out of your anger. Insufferable to deal with people like this in real life, but on screen, it’s fiendish fun. 

Joan Fontaine is a freight train and an uncanny provocatrice. Toying with women’s lives and men’s emotions, Fontaine’s honest face makes her a porcelain vase filled with thorny stems, woe be anyone who reaches in. It’s under the steam of her performance that Born To Be Bad is without a dull moment. 

As great as she is, there’s little to explain why exactly everyone’s falling over themselves to get near Christabel. Fontaine’s gift is her angelic conniving that only betrays itself to us in moments, but as for what makes Christabel an otherworldly seductress, we have to take writer Edith Sommer’s word for it. 

On the flipside of that coin, there’s also no reason for us to buy Nick and Christabel’s relationship. His defining virtue is his crass manners and aggressive pursuit of the much younger Christabel, and why she responds to it is one of those movie mysteries one must indulge. 

These are obvious flaws that limit Born To Be Bad and one is thankful Fontaine is this much fun, because otherwise Ray’s movie would be a self-deluded drag. Ray shows his ability for mischief too, however, and instructs composer Friedrich Hollaender to score it like a romance, even when we’re watching Christabel eat a man alive. It’s delectable psychological framing that’s as surprising as it is sophisticated. 

Born To Be Bad is a guilty pleasure of a watch, because it’s a movie that’s rooting for its villain and you get the sense it would like nothing more than for Christabel to win out. Its genius lies in making you come around to that way of thinking too, chalking up to mischief what is in fact evil incarnate.