Very disappointed

I am big fan of Film Noir, but only the second half of this movie qualifies. The first half is a "woman's picture" love triangle, nicely done but no suggestion of menace or paranoia.

The second half is too full of absurdities to take seriously. The frame-up and sentencing scenes are simply unbelievable. As are the events in the cabin. To take just three examples, why does Susie sit down for a relaxing drink with Jefty lying unconscious behind her instead of fleeing? And why does she taunt Jefty with the (supposedly critical) evidence, giving him a motive to kill her? When Jefty is throttling Susie on the ground, and Pete returns to save her, why does Pete dive about two feet to Jefty's right instead of on top of him? How can Jefty, who has just suffered a very serious beating that in real life would have kept him in hospital for at least a week, give the lovers a five-minute head-start and still reach the lake at about the same time? I can understand Lily puffing and blowing during the chase as she is a chain-smoker, but so does Pete, who earlier had walked away from a rugged bar-brawl with barely ruffled hair.

Ida Lupino does well throughout (apart from her singing), as always. Cornel Wilde has the thespian skills of a store-window mannequin, as always. I liked Widmark as the love-sick loser (something new for him?) but his reversion to his "push granny down the stairs" persona was too abrupt. There should have been some foreshadowing of this. Holm does well with an odd part, and has a few zingers, but seems like a left-over from a previous era of movies.

My DVD is going to the charity shop.