"Autumn Leaves" has strong, believable performances from both Crawford and Robertson, but I had a few issues with the messages.  (Don't read further if you've never seen it, since there will be spoilers).  For one thing, the moment Burt comes onto the scene, there are major red flags from his glassy-eyed stare alone.  For another, who ever said it was sane or advisable to try to "reform" a pathological liar and psychotic?  To my knowledge, it's never been done yet. If your romantic partner throws a typewriter on your hand and blackens your eye, my advice is to pack your bags and run, not enter into an equally psychotic pretense with him that all is rosy.  But poor, desperate Millie sticks by her man loyally and is determined to see him to the bloody end -- shock treatments and all.  Oh, that's another thing.  His treatment involves electric shock therapy, almost as inhumane as a lobotomy, to my mind, but apparently quite acceptable at the time.

The first half is better than the second with everything moving along in a genuinely pleasing and then gripping fashion, but the minute Millie emerged as a victim, it pleased me less.  I didn't want her to end up with this lunatic.  No woman should be that desperate or heedless of her own well being. Having "missed the boat" because she was nursing a sick father, she seems to be sliding into a caretaker role once again with her troubled husband.  Most disturbing of all is the perverse eroticism about a scene showing the battered Millie, hand in sling and sunglasses hiding her black eye, canoodling with Burt as if the ardor is undimmed in spite of the pain being inflicted.  Since she is so clearly capable, smart and attractive and he looks nutty enough to eat flies, even if she hasn't touched flesh in twenty years, what does she see in him?  Is his technique so phenomenal that she would risk life and limb for it?  When he comes out of the institution with half-cocked grin and gleaming eyes at the end, supposedly cured, I didn't believe it for a minute.  An early scene of the lovers in the surf is a gorgeous metaphor for the danger to follow with Millie in literally over her head.

During the 1950's, Crawford adopted those heavy eyebrows plus a much shorter hairstyle, and here, although her face is beautiful with a great smile, she has the overpowering brows.   In the 50's, in general, however, she was much more feminine than popular stereotype admits in the majority of her films, although often handed sub-par material.  "Autumn Leaves" gives her a chance to show her stuff and her performance is solid and superb.  A scene at the pool where she surveys her own figure in a suit with insecurity and shyness is very real and touching as are so many other moments.  There is a lovely, off-kilter shot of her sitting on the rocks above the surf. What Crawford expresses by eyes and face alone never ceases to astound me. 

In any case, it's an absorbing, moving and basically entertaining melodrama with tension balanced with moments of great fun such as when Crawford confronts Burt's family.  ("Your filthy souls are too evil for hell itself!")  One of Joan's finer, non-campy, latter day performances, but doesn't send a good message to women.- D. Nowak