This rather eccentric adaptation of an Eric Ambler novel is both marginally noir and marginally Welles: he co-wrote the screenplay with Joseph Cotten, produced and ultimately contributed to the direction and visual quality of the film, which is noted for its brilliant atmospheric touches and extreme camera angles in cinematography by Karl Struss. Cotten and Welles star in a spy intrigue set during World War II and revolving around smuggling munitions into Turkey. A mood of psychological terror is built around an American engineer (Cotten)'s knowledge that there is a price on his head and his familiarity with the identity of his would-be assassins. Filled with sinister types and exotics, the mood is bizarre with flashes of the alienation and futility that would characterize the noir cycle and Welles' later contributions to it.