Director John Brahm and cinematographer Lucien Ballard do a good job of creating a Fritz Lang like atmosphere of urban corruption and injustice but it is never a good idea to remove your star and best actor (talking about Henry Fonda, of course) from over half of this movie and replace him with bland Ralph Bellamy and hysterical Maureen O'Sullivan in what has to be her most noisome performance. Would that Brahm had exercised even half the skills he exhibited with the visual atmospherics on toning down this eager screamer. And weeper. And gusher. Perhaps realizing how uncompelling a combo Bellamy/O'Sullivan were Brahm finished the picture in an hour and fifteen minutes. Give it a C plus.
PS...Fonda would play the unjustly accused individual to better effect fifteen years later in Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man". And it's fascinating to see in this movie the 1939 version of "12 Angry Men" (and two women) in which Fonda wasn't on the jury to save Fonda.
PS...Fonda would play the unjustly accused individual to better effect fifteen years later in Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man". And it's fascinating to see in this movie the 1939 version of "12 Angry Men" (and two women) in which Fonda wasn't on the jury to save Fonda.