My Reputation (1946)

(On Cable TV, February 2021) Barbara Stanwyck’s chameleonic persona as an actress meant that she could play in anything from drama to comedy and elevate the level of the production almost singlehandedly. In My Reputation, she leans almost exclusively on the dramatic side, as she plays a WW2 widow who comes to love another man, much to everyone’s dismay and disapproval. This being a wartime picture, the second man is a soldier, and the ending stops short of providing immediate gratification to anyone. The film itself is rather ordinary — not bad in its depiction of a long-married woman trying to find a life for herself, and not bad either at tackling the complications of a widow getting back in a relationship relatively soon after the death of her husband. There’s some diffuse criticism of the way she gets treated (married men make passes at her; married women don’t know what to do with her while disapproving anyway) but it’s Stanwyck who proves to be the film’s single best asset, anchoring the heavy-handed drama with her skills as a versatile actress. There isn’t much to be said about My Reputation’s utilitarian approach to sets, cinematography or direction — it keeps the romantic potboiler warm enough to make audiences satisfied and nothing more. As I said: forgettable without Stanwyck.