This glossy, trashy soap opera of a movie has won all sorts of accolades and an idolatrous fan base, but its appeal is lost on me. It's filmed in chilly black and white, giving it the patina of an art film, but if this were filmed in blazing Technicolor, it wouldn't be any more distinguished than a heap of other 50s sudsers, like "Peyton Place" or "The Best of Everything." Vincente Minellis proved that he could do shadowy melodramas as well as colorful musicals, but his direction is still fairly anonymous. The pacing of the film itself, with its rigid flashback structure, is monotonous, and it's much too long. I get a kick out of Gloria Grahame in whatever she's in, so she was a welcome addition to the cast, but she's in the film for maybe ten minutes late into its running time, and I was too numbed by indifference by the time she appeared to regain interest. Dick Powell is the only other actor I really remember, mostly because his dry, cynical writer character was so far removed from the bouncy, googly-eyed boy-next-door roles he played in all of the Warners musicals.
Grade: C+
Grade: C+