2023 movie #197. 1946. When a man is arrested for murdering a singer, his wife enlists the dead singer's alcoholic ex-husband (Duryea) to help find the real killer. Excellent twist at the end. Good performances by Lorre as a creepy (what else) club owner and Crawford as a cop. ( )

This Universal crime noir benefits greatly from a beautiful score by Frank Skinner and some glossy production values from Roy William Neill, who added some nice directorial touches as well. An excellent cast of noir regulars and lovely June Vincent keep us interested. While the tension of a wronged wife remaining true to a cheating husband while attempting to save him from being executed for the murder of his lover,doesn't have the nail-biting tension it should — or did in Woolrich’s hands — it is still quite engrossing.

Noir staple Dan Duryea is Martin Blair, songwriter husband of beautiful Mavis Marlowe, whose penchant for blackmail gets her strangled to death in 1940s Los Angeles. Discovering her body when he arrives for their rendezvous, Kirk Bennett flees the scene and soon finds himself on death row.

June Vincent is excellent as Kirk’s wife; a woman of quality made for good times and bad. She is at a dead-end trying to clear him when she overhears Martin’s name in connection with Mavis. He has been on a drinking binge since her death but sobers up long enough to convince her he wasn’t the killer either, giving the sweet Cathy just one more false lead.

Blair feels sorry for her — and knows her husband isn’t guilty — and the two hook up to find a brooch that will prove it was someone else who kept Mavis from singing. Peter Lorre is fun as the nightspot owner, Marko. Blair and Cathy team up and bide their time to get the evidence they need. But Broderick Crawford as detective Flood isn’t quite the shoddy investigator they’d thought. A sudden twist derails them and the viewer, leaving both to wonder who killed Mavis?

As the day for execution grows nearer, both must know the truth. Complicating matters are the feelings of Blair, who has found in Cathy someone who is everything Mavis was not.

The viewer is sucked into Cornell Woolrich’s story right from the start. Roy Chanslor’s screenplay is played out by a fine cast. Duryea, who so-often portrayed the heavy during this period gets a shot at the romantic lead for a change, and makes it believable. June Vincent looks lovely and wholesome even when the studio’s costume designer Vera West glams her up during the club scenes. Vincent makes Catherine’s devotion believable as well.

Fans of the noir genre will find all the trappings here for a good time at the movies, but do well to remember who penned the source material. ( )