Strange Bargain

The bookkeeper Sam Wilson learns from his employer Malcolm Jarvis that the company is closing and he will lose his job. Jarvis then puts a strange proposition to him: he means to take his own life, but he wants it to look like a murder so that his wife and son can collect on his insurance. Sam refuses. But when he goes to see the man he finds him dead, and reluctantly falls in with the scheme. The film builds what follows as a story of guilt; the real matter is not the killing but that telling the truth grows harder with every day. The account works with the moulds of film noir and keeps its short length tight. The distance between what his wife knows and does not know carries the tension. Martha Scott and Jeffrey Lynn appear in Will Price’s sixty eight minute American film, completed in 1949.