This script bears a resemblance to Preminger's Laura in its depiction of the art world as a vicious battleground with only the thinnest veneer of elegance. But Hathaway's tight and engrossing thriller uses a dual plot development to keep the audience just one step ahead of the hero, a private eye (Mark Stevens) just released from jail after having been framed for a crime by his ex-partner. In searching for the turncoat he becomes drawn into the murderous schemes of art dealer Clifton Webb. In a fine cast that includes Lucille Ball as Stevens' secretary, William Bendix creates a memorable emblem (not unlike Widmark in Kiss of Death) as the omnipresent “man in the white suit” who tails Stevens from the start, adding to his already bitter sense of alienation. An entry in Silver and Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style notes, “In many ways The Dark Corner (1946) is the prototypical reflection of postwar malaise in film noir and, albeit metaphorically, a more effective statement about the price of social readjustment than such a self-conscious film as The Best Years of Our Lives.”