Runaway Roller Coaster

In 1955, Frank Sinatra used to sing that “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage”, though the film noir today, titled Woman on the Run, which was released five years earlier in 1950, takes a wholly different look at the topic... centred upon an up and down, topsy turvy roller coaster ride of a relationship – which, of course, has its climax ending at an amusement park that, you guessed it, features a roller coaster. It only seems fitting then that one of its screen writers, Alan Campbell, had his own tumultuous relationship with his wife Dorothy Parker (they formed a popular writing team together), while the feature’s director, Norman Foster (Kiss the Blood Off my Hands; and a protégé of Orson Welles), also had his fair share of problems when he married Claudette Colbert... in other words, two complicated relationships that probably influenced this movie and its themes.