It begins with the camera in the back of the seat - three years before Gun Crazy - just saying. (I seem to be a bit fascinated by this - see this post, for example.)
Written by 'Geoffrey Homes' aka Daniel Mainwaring, from his novel 'Build My Gallows High' and - uncredited - James M Cain and Frank Fenton. Mainwaring's other screen credits include The Big Steal, This Woman Is Dangerous, The Phenix City Story and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Funnily enough, like Restless, our preceding film, it's about someone who's been keeping low for years but then is found and drawn back into the past.
Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb (Kirk's No. 2), Steve Brodie (Mitch's partner), Virginia Huston (his girlfriend), child actor Dickie Moore. Shot by Nicholas Musuraca, music by Roy Webb, nice direction of mood by Tourneur.
With great moments of tension, Hopperish lighting and snappy dialogue it's a perfect alignment of talents.
Donald Macperson in Time Out has this to say: "Beguiling and resolutely ominous..The mood of obsession was never more powerfully suggestive: Mitchum waiting for Greer in a Mexican bar beneath a flashing neon sign sums it up - nothing happens, but everything is said... All these B movie poets [Mainwaring, Musuraca, Tourneur] were under contract to RKO in the winter of 1946, and produced the best movie of everyone involved - once seen, never forgotten."
I don't know if it had a higher budget than some of the RKO features but it does move around artfully all over the place - San Francisco and Acapulco are stock shots, of course, but we do seem to be in Tahoe, Nevada, Reno, Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Now I've another thing to study next time - Eddie Muller points out that Musaraca is not lighting in total chiaroscuro but using fill lights to detail some of the interior backgrounds - have to look out for that. Doesn't apply to his Hopper touches, above, of course. It is beautifully shot.
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