Review of I Want to Live! (1958) by John W — 04 May 2015

Starring Susan Hayward. Unrelentingly bleak dramatization of the then-controversial case of Barbara Graham -- a woman of loose morals convicted of and then executed for a murder she may not have committed.

Hayward won a deserved Oscar for her sympathetic, if fictionalized, portrayal of the woman the press called 'Bloody Babs'. A jazzy score takes all of the proceedings to a fever pitch, aided by superb cinematography and the fine direction of Robert Wise.