This movie got under my skin. I don't know why. It's no masterpiece, but I've watched it three times, returning to it every few years because it I find it so satisfying. I think of it as soap-opera noir, and without the noir I wouldn't enjoy it. But it's well written, constructed, and paced, like most of Nicholas Ray's movies, including his neglected gem, "Bigger than Life."
The big attraction is Joan Fontaine, so silken smooth as the bad girl who never met a man she didn't want. But there's also Joan Leslie, who was only in her twenties but plays such an intelligent, mature, talented woman that she seems oddly ageless. She's one of several actresses from 1940s Hollywood who never quite reached the starry heights of Stanwyck, Bergman, Hepburn, Crawford, and Davis, but never disappoints.
The big attraction is Joan Fontaine, so silken smooth as the bad girl who never met a man she didn't want. But there's also Joan Leslie, who was only in her twenties but plays such an intelligent, mature, talented woman that she seems oddly ageless. She's one of several actresses from 1940s Hollywood who never quite reached the starry heights of Stanwyck, Bergman, Hepburn, Crawford, and Davis, but never disappoints.