BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Roy Hart
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Brennan Camacho
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
HotToastyRag
After four nominations for Best Actress, Susan Hayward finally took home an Oscar in 1959 for her bold performance in I Want to Live! She was very good in this film, and there really wasn't any other actress in Hollywood who could have played the part, but I always wished she would have won the Oscar in 1955 for I'll Cry Tomorrow. You'll be hard-pressed to find a better performance in Hollywood history.In this true story that finally won Suzy the gold, she plays Barbara Graham, a coarse woman with a bit of an unsavory past. She falls in with the wrong crowd, and when they're all found at the scene of the crime, she's arrested for murder. She's one tough broad, and won't take her death sentence lying down. The film follows her as she fights for appeals and maintains her innocence. This isn't a feel-good movie, but given the subject matter, it's not really expected to be. It's a bleak black-and-white film, which is perfect because of the black-and-white fate of Suzy. The reason why I Want to Live! is so special and so uniquely Suzy is because she injects a vulnerability into the character instead of making her a one-dimensional tough broad. Yes, Susan has that fantastic low voice and that fantastic shoulder-first walk, but she also breaks down in tears as says goodbye to her infant son.Nominated for Best Director, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, and Sound, this is a universally hailed classic from the 1950s. Even to modern audiences, it's praised as incredibly realistic, often compared to Dead Man Walking. It's rather difficult to watch, though, so even though Suzy won the Oscar for it, it's not one I like to see over and over again. But since she does give an excellent, heart wrenching performance, and since she's my favorite classic actress, I do watch it every couple of years. It's hard to stay away from her beauty, strength, and talent, and since I've only ever seen her in one comedy, I know I'm in for a heavy drama when I pop in a Susan Hayward movie. She really is the queen of comedy; as Rupert Everett says in My Best Friend's Wedding, "The misery, the exquisite tragedy, the Susan Hayward of it all."
Kirpianuscus
it is her film. a strange film because, without be great, it is more than touching. the story of a prostitute and her guilty. a film about a murder. and about life in a different perspective. Susan Hayward has the huge science to explore each nuance of her character . and this did the film more than one of many sad stories about the waste of life. because it is easy to be prey of melodramatic solutions in this genre of role. it is easy to ignore the limits. or to give to public only a sketch or shadow. and this subtle art to propose a living Barbara Graham, with her superficiality, hopes, courage, fears defines a film who remains, after a half of century, not remarkable but special.
russellalancampbell
There is little that I could add to the other reviews and, if you read them, most will attest to the power of "I Want to Live". This is a jarring, harrowing film from the acting to the jazz score. It is brutally honest in its sordid and ugly depictions of the seedier side of American life - the lowlifes, junkies, "goodtime girls", small-time crims and even a family man taking a walk on the wild side in the opening scene. The preparations and procedures related to capital punishment are even more chillingly depicted than those of "In Cold Blood". The camera angles and the jazz score add to the uncomfortable and off-kilter events of this other world that most of us know about and sometimes visit but do not inhabit. Lastly, Susan Hayward's performance is shattering. "I Want to Live" is a once seen never forgotten experience.
Michael O'Keefe
It may take nerves of steel and a calloused heart to sit through this hard hitting drama directed by Robert Wise. Based on a sad, but true story. Susan Hayward won the Oscar for her portrayal of Barbara Graham, a woman with a troubled past of being involved with various petty crimes and known for frequenting seedy bars and dives. Stupidly she got too close to a couple of men that finger her for being part of a robbery-murder. Possibly payback for thinking she ratted on them to the police. The brash and brazen Graham is pretty well screwed and tattooed; indicted, and railroaded to conviction leading to her sentencing to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin. All along, she claimed she didn't do it; her reputation foreshadowing her fate. Several scenes somehow got by the straight-laced censors of the time. Filmed in dramatic black and white. At times Hayward can be accused of over-acting, but she did win the Oscar for giving the role her all. Even if her character appeared to be a woman of loose morals and maybe just a victim of bad luck...you can't help but feel sorry for her. Graham was a tough woman and wasn't afraid to tell you so. Others in the cast: Simon Oakland, Theodore Bikel, Virginia Vincent, Bartlett Robinson, Alice Backes and Raymond Bailey.
