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The ultimate expression of the paranoid woman trope, so common to the 1940s, has a completely sane female character committed to a sanatorium where she is driven mad, in testing circumstances, brought to the brink, and made mad in the face of truth.
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The film tells the story of a phony spiritualist racket, which is rather excellently described with the various tricks of the trade merrily on display, much as they are in fairground noir Nightmare Alley (1947), which also reveals some of the tricks of the trickster's trade in all their shabby glory.
The film is prominently featured in Alton's book on cinematography Painting with Light (1949) and , the photography does certainly have a full-on film noir feel, with its massive plays of dark and light around doorways and stairways and other architectural corners — including an interesting and repeated shot of the spiritualists at work via the crystal ball — shot from below. Some of the most memorably and recognisable film noir photography on the block.
Another of the stranger angles places the viewer inside a sink.
Within the excellent opening photography, we witness rakish Hollywood composer (Edward Ashley) dropping dead in his swanky Hollywood house.
The film noir police force think it's a straight up suicide, but maverick lieutenant hero Joe Warne (played by George Raft) suspects murder.
With no hanging about, Warne discovers that this Hollywood composer has broken the hearts of at least ten women in recent years, offering motive for murder aplenty.
The main suspect is Frances Ransom (played by Lynn Bari), who may or may not have been avenging her sister, the nightclub thrush Carol Page (Virginia Huston).
Pursuing the case with enough firm diligence to get him at one stage thrown off the police force, determined copper Joe Warne of course refuses to give up.
There is a hint here of a sub-genre that would become larger by far as the years passed, the dark side of Hollywood as film noir, which remained popular as much among the community itself, as it was with the theatre-visiting public. Hollywood loves to film itself, murdering itself. In that glorious, glamourous heart, there is always a corrupting influence to be found.