starring Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes
directed by Joseph Losey
92 minutes
Police Officer (and general no goodnik) Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) wins over lonely housewife Susan Gilvray. He covets the success she has achieved by marrying a rich man. They start an affair which ends after he murders her husband, makes it look like an accident, and then convinces her to marry him.
Webb's plans hit a snag when on their honeymoon Susan tells him that she is pregnant, with his baby. There's no possibility of passing it off as her first husband's child because he was incapable of fathering a child.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Webb and Susan decide to hide out in a ghost town until the baby is born. That plan falls apart once Susan goes into labor and Webb is forced to go find a doctor.
Thoughts
I saw this movie as part of the 2025 edition of the Noir City DC film festival.
I have seen Van Heflin in a few other films, my favorite of which is 3:10 to Yuma (1957). I have seen Evelyn Keyes in a couple other films but this is the only one in which she played one of the lead characters. I haven't seen any films in which she has appeared in the past 25 plus years. Madge Blake has a small part in this film as the sister-in-law of Susan's first husband. I know her best from Batman (1966) where she played the part of Aunt Harriet.
The passage of time in this movie is kind of fuzzy. Everything felt very sped up. It seemed (for instance) that Susan went from being 4 months pregnant to going into labor almost overnight. What?
There are a couple subtle themes running through this film according to Noir Czar Eddie Muller. The first I kind of touched on in my summary, the destructive effects of greed. The second I didn't really recon with and that's that the movie can also be read as being an account of the lengths to which Susan goes to have a baby. I can't deny that they are both there but I didn't really consider them until they were pointed out to me.
This is a weird one. Both of the lead actors do a decent job but it is a strange story. Webb is creepy as all get out. I don't fully understand why Susan stood by him and married him. I'm not sure that I would recommend this movie to anyone but there are probably some people out there who would enjoy it more than I did.
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