Robert Mitchum, as chauffeur to a wealthy family, becomes implicated in the crimes of his mistress (in both senses of the word) Jean Simmons, whose excessive, obsessive adoration of her father (Herbert Marshall) leads to murder. In Preminger's hands, the passionate and unsettling relationships seem not merely underscored but oddly understood; he delineates with compassion the fatalistic mood of sexual and class obsession. "(The) long, slow tracking shots through the baroque mansion and the intense close-ups of the inscrutable heroine remind one of Dreyer. Jean Simmons, awake in a dream...recalls Gene Tierney in Whirlpool and foreshadows Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse. These women are treated sympathetically by Preminger...because they feel more deeply than others" (HM).