And so here the curtains part to reveal the blissful household of Fred MacMurray with perfect wife Joan Bennett (one of the most devastating characters in all cinema: so wretchedly unknowing in her smothering of her husband, so cheerfully oblivious of all the pain around her, the only personage to escape even a tinge of anguish…), a charming Father Knows Best trio of offspring (who vow to revere their father but promptly walk all over him again-watch their faces at the dinner table and try not to quake), and a lucrative toy-manufacturing concession. Enter Barbara Stanwyck. The man who plays with toys grows up but it's too late. In no other movie does the claustrophobia of domestic rigidity become so shattering as in this Greek drama of a complacent, insulated man becoming aware.