Against an obscure, baroquely stylized locale almost arbitrarily tagged "Chicago in the early thirties," Ray creates a surreal atmosphere of exoticism and violence. Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse are well cast against type as a gangland lawyer and a lounge singer/call girl who rebel against an underworld "family" of which mobster Lee J. Cobb is the formidable father. As in other Ray films (They Live by Night, Rebel Without a Cause), love in the context of a brutal society becomes l'amour fou; but in no other film does "normality" approach the hellish insanity of Party Girl.