Impact

Walter Williams is a successful car manufacturer who trusts his wife Irene. Irene, with her lover, is planning to kill him. The plan goes wrong: the assassin dies, Walter survives injured and gets away from the scene. He learns he is presumed dead. He starts working under another name in a small town and watches from a distance as his wife is tried for murder. Then he realises his own position is not as clean as he thought. Arthur Lubin takes the second half of a 1940s noir somewhere unexpected: a new life instead of revenge, a quiet town instead of tension. That change of structure is the most discussed thing about the film. Brian Donlevy plays Walter, Helen Walker his wife, and Ella Raines the woman in the town. Anna May Wong is also in the cast. Who it's for: Viewers who like 1940s noir, narratives of changed identity, and courtroom sections. Who it's not for: The drop in pace in the second half is a problem for some. The writing of the woman also runs in the shapes of its period.