The Accused

William Dieterle's 1949 noir is adapted from a novel by June Truesdell. Loretta Young plays Wilma Tuttle, a precise, respected psychology professor who lives alone. When one of her students drives her out to the coast and forces himself on her, she fights him off and he dies. Certain that nobody would believe her account, she chooses to hide her part in it, and that choice is where the film's real tension comes from. It also does something rare for its decade: the way men come at her everywhere, in the classroom, at the police station, in the crime lab, is treated as the subject rather than the wallpaper. Robert Cummings and Wendell Corey support.