Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

vincentlynch-moonoi This is a very interesting film, although it as one problem, Is it film noir? I'm not totally sure. To me it's just more of a mystery.Let's begin with the problem. Audrey Totter does fairly well here, but to there is a problem with her character. Would a female doctor in a mental hospital be that friendly and casual with a patient...particularly back in the late 1940s? I think not, although it's almost necessary to make the script work.This was a good film for Robert Taylor. Certainly different than his typical role. Here he plays a returning vet who discovers his wife apparently cheating on him. He strangles her...or does he? He is arrested and due to PTSD (of course that was not a recognized condition back then) placed in a mental institution for evaluation.Who might an alternate suspect be? Perhaps Herbert Marshall, the probable lover. A different role for Marshall, as well. I'm quite a fan of Marshall's, and this is not one of my favorite Marshall roles.I wasn't particularly pleased with how quickly the ending of the movie took place. However, this is a fine film and well worth watching. Recommended.

Martha Wilcox I can see why this film didn't stand the test of time because it's not that good. Here we have Robert Taylor accused of murdering his wife and sent to an asylum. Until we discover that he is innocent, we believe that Taylor is guilty because he has darkness in him. He appears unshaven at the start, and with his one-dimensional acting of limited expressions, he looks more at home as an antagonist rather than a protagonist. He does perform like a machine sometimes, and needs a good actor to play against.Funnily, in 'Ivanhoe', we were more sympathetic towards George Sanders as the antagonist rather than Taylor as the protagonist. He was saved by a good script which gave him some good dialogue. This is what is missing from this film: a good script with some crisp dialogue.

evanston_dad A mildly engaging if unremarkable psychodrama about a man returning from WWII with a head injury who is accused of killing his wife. He's committed to a mental institution until he's able to regain control of his faculties. Once he does, he begins to suspect that he wasn't responsible for his wife's death after all and so begins a fight with the hospital's staff to convince them that he's not a raving nutjob and merely seeks the truth of what happened.We know he's not guilty, mostly because he's played by Robert Taylor, and the female doctor assigned to his case (played by the lovely Audrey Totter) begins to realize that too, right around the time she starts to fall in love with him. The film looks like a noir, but's its really just a piece of melodramatic hokum in noir clothing.Taylor and Totter make a rather stiff pairing. I've come to adore Totter, a rather unknown actress who seems to have made her mark mainly in "B" offerings, but I like her better as a hotsy-totsy spitfire, like the one she played in "Tension." Here she's asked to be straight-laced and professional, and she's not nearly as much fun. Herbert Marshall makes an effectively oily villain though, and he provides the movie the majority of whatever pizazz it has.Released shortly after WWII, the film more than anything is a laughable "warning" about what happens when men go off to war and the womenfolk stay behind. They get bored and set out to find (gasp!) jobs, but they of course eventually have affairs with their bosses and are murdered as punishment. Ah, how far we've come.....Grade: B-

jxm4687 Robert Taylor grapples valiantly with an offbeat role that may be too much for his limited range. He has some good scenes as a World War II vet who sustained head injuries and whose return to civilian life is plagued by headaches--and worse, incarceration in a county mental hospital after he is suspected of murdering his wife. Did he do it? No way, this guy was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, loves his young son whom he hasn't seen for two years (while flying charter places in Burma to earn bucks for an ambitious wife), and really wants to take a research fellowship (for a measly $200 bucks a month. Besides, the movie tips its hand as to the murderer's true identity before Taylor even appears.That first glimpse of Taylor is a stunner--he's at the wheel of a car speeding out of control, an apparently dead blonde female (his wife as it turns out) at his side, his face full of madness and anguish. Unfortunately, the movie gets bogged down in dated (and superficial) psychiatry and trite glimpses of life in a mental ward. The relationship between Taylor and his psychiatrist (Audrey Totter) strains credibility, though it does push the plot forward to a fairly exciting, if not believable, conclusion. Totter is a disappointment, drab and too serious--her performance needs more of the sharp, tart personality you get from many of her other roles. Director Curtis Bernhardt gets in a few good film noir licks here. The rain during the extended climax is effective, and the scene where hospital staff visits Taylor's mother--only to find her dead--is extraordinary.Do a few terrific moments make this a worthwhile 98 minutes? Maybe.