"A skillful telling of a pretty nasty story about a man who loves money and women almost equally well and finds that they get in each other's way" (James Agee, 1947). Robert Young is effectively cast against type as the protagonist who by the film's start already has been accused of murder (wife Rita Johnson and mistress Susan Hayward are both dead). In court he tells his story in flashback, understandably convinced that the jury won't believe him. Agee: "Mr. Young and Miss Johnson are excellent as the ill-mated man and wife...and many of the minor roles are more sharply drawn and cast than the leads. The jury, for instance, may be caricatured, but it is frightening to consider that such a group holds in its hands a life even so patently worthless as Mr. Young's." Producer Joan Harrison, who was primarily associated with Hitchcock and Siodmak, brings some of their sardonic outlook to this underrated work whose ending pretty much closes the book on film noir fatalism.