Drifter John Garfield is invited in to Cecil Kellaway's diner, and there meets Lana Turner... and all the trouble begins. Niven Busch and Harry Ruskin adapted James M Cain's novel, which shares some similarities with 'Double Indemnity', though has a weakened ending - we would have preferred it if at the end she bumps him off and gets away with it. Of course that couldn't happen then.
And if there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute her, why accept a manslaughter charge? And surely after that there would have been no insurance payout?
Stylish MGM production, quite long. Features Leon Ames (DA), Hume Cronyn (attorney), Alan Reed (blackmailer), Audrey Totter (briefly but memorably), Jeff York.
Photographed by Sidney Wagner, music by George Bassman, edited by George White.
"That cat - dead as a doornail."
The title is rather clumsily worked in and might have been best omitted, as indeed could the blackmail plot, which doesn't add anything. And her swim / test is absurd. So yes, had we been producers at MGM in 1946 we might have had a word or two to say.
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