A pity that - mainly because of war service - Kirk Douglas didn't make his film debut until he was 28, in this typical Forties black drama, directed in this case by the veteran director Lewis Milestone, who had made All Quiet on the Western Front and Of Mice and Men, and here skilfully handles a flashback tale of blackmail and murder. Barbara Stanwyck is in her element as the poisonous Miss Ivers, but critics quite rightly picked out Douglas's magnetic performance as the beginning of a long star career.

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