It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Dick Powell is surprisingly cool and restrained throughout the film, and his latent force only breaks out once in something of a parenthesis. Lizabeth Scott was never lovelier and more suave, and she does not need much acting to be convincing enough just by being. Jane Wyatt is also perfect as the mother and wife who is kept in the dark of what is going on as far as possible, until she also has to have a break; but the main character here is Raymond Burr, later Perry Mason, who is perfectly abominable. Although he does as little as possible and only acts by clandestine deliberate intrigue, he dominates the film and action, and you fear him when he does not appear, just as Lizabeth Scott does - you must feel like her, and you must sympathize with her, especially in the end. She is the real victim, while Dick Powell will have a hard time living with it, just as the inspector points out.To this comes the uncredited music by Louis Forbes, a haunting tune almost as possessive as the theme in "Laura", and it fills the screen from the beginning and resounds until the end. The direction by André de Toth is perhaps the best in his career, he later specialized in horror pictures, like the original "House of Wax"; but best of all is the flippant dialogue, enjoyable throughout. Once again it seems, that you can't make a bad film on a good script. On the contrary, once the script is good, it tends to inspire the film to even higher quality.

There's really nothing femme fatal about Lizabeth Scott's character here except that she has really bad luck choosing men, and those she's attracted to aren't available. Those attracted to her are scumbags. The story focuses on insurance executive Dick Powell who doesn't feel contentment in his job or his marriage to the pretty but bland Jane Wyatt. Business takes him into an affair with the sultry but basically decent Scott whose boyfriend is in prison for stealing money from one of Powell's clients. Unaware that his business associate Raymond Burr is obsessed with her, Powell continues to see her even after she finds out the truth about him, causing Burr to go mad with obsession towards her. This all culminates into the inevitable course of murder, with Powell at the forefront of scandal and bringing Scott to the edge by Burr's continued stalking of her. This doesn't have all of the elements of traditional film noir, not as dark or complex and other than Burr, lacking in really malevolent characters. Even the character of Scott's imprisoned boyfriend becomes a victim of Burr's demented mind, setting him up as a victim and bringing out the hidden darkness inside of Scott. This is more character driven than circumstance driven, and lacks the proper darkness to count among the truly great noir classics.

A crime drama with Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Burr (who got billed 4th, but plays the 2nd lead as a psychotic detective), and directed by Toth, and the foremost highlight is the style in which the leading character is played, an acting style which very much grounds the events and balances the story; the character's initial sloth doesn't involve despair and hopelessness, so that the two types of characters, the settled bourgeois and the feverish oddballs (the mistress and the detective) don't reach each other _innerly. But this isn't inadvertent and also suits the plot's realism, as the nascent liaison is crippled, disrupted, repressed, almost like stillborn. Burr provides an astonishing performance (that makes Mitchum's otherwise deservedly celebrated pair of kindred roles seem childish and harmless by comparison).Acknowledging the awesomeness of Toth's crime movie, the decisiveness of Burr's input has to be championed as well; his performance earns him a special merit. He makes this movie what it is. His handsomeness benefited of intelligence, burliness and glamour. He takes part in making this movie a masterpiece from the standpoint of enjoyment.The movie has a small cast, and the characters define each other: how Burr and Powell are defined by the woman, how she's defined by the detective. The characters are defined mutually: the weird detective, by the woman; the leading character, also by her. And she's defined by the detective. The actors' interplay has been as challenging as it's enthralling.Powell reminded me of B. Willis, with his playful, amused, lightly ironic behavior, as in the family breakfast scene, or the evening reading; he brings his ease so that the character seems good-_natured rather than bored, he makes an almost cheerful bourgeois, more impassible than resigned (his avowal that he lacks ease would of suited more a character played by Stewart or G. Peck or someone abler of gloom). The acting styles are highly contrasting: Powell's initial calm and temperate sloth, then his indecisiveness, irresoluteness after wishing to confess that he has a family, and Lizabeth Scott and Burr's feverishness, his with that sharp artistic intelligence that made meaningful each role he has ever got. Here, his role is quite large.The direction is masterly, and gives the movie its timelessness; Toth was one of the masters of the B cinema, revered by some, and his movies are the reward of the true movie buffs. The highlight scene to me is the lovers' meeting after he has recovered from the blows and she has found out that he has a family, that scene is so reasonably treated.The cast choice proved refreshing, mainly by the unconventional lead. The romance seems a whim rather than a doomed liaison. The plot may seem a bourgeois misadventure, like in 'Cape Fear', with a bourgeois confronting the underworld, meeting and facing the disinherited, and indeed the romance remains crippled in a nascent phase, begins and is stifled, gets crippled, crushed, repressed, and perhaps this makes the emotional drive so true and effective.

Potentially interesting film noir about a married man who falls for a sexy blonde is ruined by the miscast Lizabeth Scott. I'm not a fan of Scott's. I don't find her attractive or alluring and this role calls for both. When the movie's plot revolves around men going gaga over a lady, it's kind of important that lady be the type you could see men going gaga over. Like Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth. Not a woman with masculine bone structure and a voice like an emphysemic septuagenarian. So yeah I don't get it. I don't get the appeal of Lizabeth Scott and I fail to see how any man who has a young Jane Wyatt waiting at home would rather hang out with her. Beyond the sex appeal issue, Scott delivers her lines like she's reading them off cue cards. There are some noticeably punchy lines in this script that a better actress would have made work. But when Scott delivers them it's just dreadful.On the other hand we have Dick Powell and he's great. Unfortunately he has zero chemistry with Scott. Since that is a pivotal part of the plot, the whole thing falls apart. We also have Raymond Burr as a heavy who, quite bafflingly to me, is also enamored with Scott. Like I said I just don't get it. A better actress in this part with real sex appeal that I can buy men desiring and this movie becomes so much better. Obviously my opinion is in the minority. This film currently has a good rating on IMDb for a film this old. Clearly others don't have the issues with Lizabeth Scott that I do. So take that into account and decide for yourself whether this film is worth a shot or not.