The style of this film looks ahead to the '50's rather than back to the '40's. The bright sun shines through blonde hair, with hardly a rain-swept streetlamp to be seen anywhere. (Well, just a couple about midway through the film.)
It's a Bonnie and Clyde story told in the wake of "Double Indemnity". A hardboiled, cold-hearted, manipulative blonde gets an ambivalent young man into trouble.
John Dall does a decent job in the Fred MacMurray part, although his character, as written, seems a little too sensitive at times for a small-time stick-up man. "Two people dead! Just so we can live without working!" He's quite different from the cool, rationalizing schemer he played shortly before, in "Rope" for Alfred Hitchcock. Did this moralizing aspect of the film carry over from MacKinlay Kantor's original Saturday Evening Post story? Chances are pretty good. Dall's character does talk about going to work, but then he's not the one in the driver's seat. "Some guys are born smart about women, some are born dumb."
His Barbara Stanwyck is played by Peggy Cummins. She is more typical of what one would expect from an unexceptional B actioner, and ultimately that's how this film struck me.
The swamp climax is the film's great highlight and almost looks as though it belongs to a different and much better motion picture.
I found some of the startling period details to be the most interesting things in the movie. The border patrol along the California state line (not on the border with Mexico) where they check drivers for fruits and vegetables. Or the hardware store with a display of pistols in the front window. One brickbat through the glass, and you're heavily armed. If that was their starting point, then the US has at least come a little way along the road towards gun control.
It's a Bonnie and Clyde story told in the wake of "Double Indemnity". A hardboiled, cold-hearted, manipulative blonde gets an ambivalent young man into trouble.
John Dall does a decent job in the Fred MacMurray part, although his character, as written, seems a little too sensitive at times for a small-time stick-up man. "Two people dead! Just so we can live without working!" He's quite different from the cool, rationalizing schemer he played shortly before, in "Rope" for Alfred Hitchcock. Did this moralizing aspect of the film carry over from MacKinlay Kantor's original Saturday Evening Post story? Chances are pretty good. Dall's character does talk about going to work, but then he's not the one in the driver's seat. "Some guys are born smart about women, some are born dumb."
His Barbara Stanwyck is played by Peggy Cummins. She is more typical of what one would expect from an unexceptional B actioner, and ultimately that's how this film struck me.
The swamp climax is the film's great highlight and almost looks as though it belongs to a different and much better motion picture.
I found some of the startling period details to be the most interesting things in the movie. The border patrol along the California state line (not on the border with Mexico) where they check drivers for fruits and vegetables. Or the hardware store with a display of pistols in the front window. One brickbat through the glass, and you're heavily armed. If that was their starting point, then the US has at least come a little way along the road towards gun control.