This is an excellent film noir, featuring a very pert and pretty Alexis Smith as the object of a nasty Humphrey Bogart's lustful obsessions. Good old Sydney Greenstreet is as jolly and quietly scheming as ever. Regarding Smith, who is his sister-in-law, Bogart has 'gotta have her' but has not bothered to ask her first how she feels about that. Not waiting for such trivial information as what anyone else thinks, he hastens to commit 'the almost-perfect murder' of his wife so that he can be free to pursue his fantasy relationship with her sister. Greenstreet notices the giveaway-clue but with his poker face says nothing. This is all good vintage Hollywood stuff. The film was directed by German refugee Curtis Bernhardt, who fled the Gestapo and became one of Hollywood's many Germans, along with Fritz Lang and all the others. The next year, he directed the famous Bette Davis film A STOLEN LIFE. Robert Siodmak, another well-known émigré German director of noirs, wrote the original story for this one. Good expressionist angst.
Review of Conflict
