Nasty plot of betrayal and denouement and yet it’s a quality noir of the time.
Review:
“Successful businessman Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy) loves his pretty wife Irene (Helen Walker) more than anything. Little does he know she’s plotting with her lover to kill him. During the murder attempt, Walter is hit hard on the head but lives. The other guy, however, is killed in a car crash and burned beyond recognition.
Believed to have been the man killed in the crash, Walter decides not to come forward. Instead he goes to work as a mechanic in the garage of Marsha Peters (Ella Raines). When Irene is tried for his murder, Walter must decide whether or not to reveal he’s still alive.
Brian Donlevy is pretty good. He’s at his best when his character is angry or edgy. The sappy romantic stuff doesn’t fit him well. Helen Walker is a particularly hissable villainess. Lovely Ella Raines is the good girl. There’s no meat to the part but she does well with what she’s given. Charles Coburn plays the detective out to get to the bottom of things. He’s always fun.
Arthur Lubin’s direction in the first half is great film noir. I loved the scene where the lover tries to kill the husband. The whole thing was brilliantly executed. Then something happens and it’s like a separate movie.
The second half is much less like noir and more like a standard crime melodrama where a girl has to prove her guy is innocent of murder. If the entire picture had been like the first half, I’d say it was one of film noir’s best. But it isn’t. It’s still an enjoyable movie with some good twists and turns.”
My own tuppence ha’penny:
Most reviewers were all for the performance of Helen Walker, the beech tree of a wife, with accolades for other players, whereas I was for Ella Raines from the start … interesting that she was at the same time a Hollywood pinup … and yet a homebody believing in the sanctity of marriage … which she took with her into real life marriage … by marrying a WW2 fighter ace, married to the air force, there was an obvious clash and she refused to live in accommodation on the bases.
It could only have gone one way, esp. with his drinking. She knew what she was marrying, maybe she thought he’d settle for the homelife. Which is exactly the situation in the film, with a wheeler-dealer magnate suddenly finding himself in humble circumstances with her … and with her good but bright mother.
It was this backstory which gave the film an edge for me, plus her sad real life, inc. miscarriages and stillbirth. Just seems to me that my life was with the Helen Walkers … well, not that bad … and somehow not the Ella Rainses. But maybe the Ella Rainses saw me as too maverick to handle or maybe not bewitching enough. Ho hum.
Then there was the question of the beech tree getting her just desserts in the movie … yes or no? There’s much food for thought in this film, a long one at 1h 50m odd, kicking off here at 1420.