This is a noir vision of a Sirkian Barbara Stanwyck role: the worldly wise woman trying to make a go of domesticity. Defeated by the city, she returns to her small fishing town and attempts to suppress her sophistication by marrying a goodhearted fisherman, Paul Douglas. But she is drawn into the adulterous net of Robert Ryan, like her, an anguished misfit. The film, adapted from a play by Clifford Odets, has some of the most caustic dialogue of any of the fifties noirs. Visually, Lang and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca counterpose claustrophobic interiors and documentary-style location shooting (so uncharacteristic of Lang) of the Monterey sardine fishing industry and Cannery Row, making this an effective partner to another, similarly incisive film about postwar women as homeless refugees, Rossellini's Stromboli (with Ingrid Bergman). Marilyn Monroe, in one of her first important dramatic roles, takes lessons from sister-in-law Stanwyck on how to be free and then come home "when you run out of places." (JB)