It has the smartest dialogue and the most persuasively labyrinthine plot of any film noir. And Robert Mitchum gives a great performance as the tough, laconic guy in a trench coat, undone by his love for—or is it merely sexual obsession with?—Jane Greer’s scheming bitch-goddess. TIME (Dec. 15, 1947) didn’t like Mitchum (“Bing Crosby supersaturated with barbiturates”) but found Greer “in an ancient idiom, as a hot number.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbXv64Yye5g]