What a waste of my time!!!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The first time I saw this, years ago, I thought it was a little torpid. At the opening, when private investigator Mark Stevens slaps the dumb hood William Bendix around, why doesn't Bendix fight back? Then there is Stevens' pushy new secretary, Lucille Ball. Are we in for a romance? Now I don't know why I was bored because, on second viewing, it looks pretty good to me. Maybe all those Charlie Chan movies I saw in the interim have led to successive contrast. This is pretty good noir. The plot itself is nothing that you wouldn't find in a B feature detective story, but just about all of the other elements come together. There is a good woman, yes, but there's also a bad woman. And there is stark lighting, location shooting in New York, despair, shadows, intrigue, murder, frame ups, and well-drawn characters.Where else can you find a line like, "I feel all dead inside. I'm backed up into a dark corner and I don't know who's hitting me." I don't want to get into the plot too deeply because it meanders around quite a lot, like most of these tales. Stevens and Ball are searching for someone who is out to frame Stevens for the murder of a man who had previously framed Stevens for another crime, of which Stevens was innocent. You see what I mean about the plot being tortuous.But -- plot aside -- the photography by Joe MacDonald is excellent. Whatever criticisms may be made of the old studio system, there were giants in the earth. MacDonald was also responsible for shooting "My Darling Clementine" and "Call Northside 777." Except for a little "Manhattan Serenade" under the credits, there is no overscore. All the music in the film comes from some source -- a nightclub band, somebody practicing the piano. It's what Franz Waxman did for "Rear Window." The dialog is divided into three levels: that spoken by Clifton Webb, the aesthete owner of an art gallery; that spoken by ordinary people like Stevens and Ball; and that spoken by roughnecks like William Bendix.Webb gets much better lines than in his other pouf roles, including "Laura." Samples: "I detest the dawn. The grass always looks like it's been left out all night." When an elderly lady remarks that a painting "grows on you," Webb's arch riposte is: "My dear, you make it sound like some sort of fungus." Bendix, the thug, is careless in Webb's office and Webb says sharply: "And stop flicking your ashes on my carpet. That's a genuine capuchin." (Webb uses the French pronunciation of "capuchin" and I had to look it up in Wikipedia to find out what the hell he was saying.) Webb's wife -- Cathy Downs, who can't act -- protests that her paramour would never run off with that other lady because he loathed her. "He loathed her rather intimately, I'm afraid."Level two -- ordinary language -- doesn't get the same number of zingers, but here's a sample. Stevens was convicted of a crime of which he was innocent. Now, someone has left a dead body in his apartment. When he discovers he's been set up yet again, Steven puts his head in his hands and remarks, "I can be framed easier than whistler's mother."The screenwriters, Dratler and Schoenfeld, don't get a pass for level three, the patois of the underclass. It sounds as if they've been reading twenty-year-old pulp magazines. They over reach and you can hear the creaking of joints as they do: "I need two yards for powder money." That translates as "I need two-hundred dollars to take a powder (ie., get out of town)." Stevens is surprisingly effective. He's not really very expressive but he does "anxiety" much better than Bogart ever did.

Henry Hathaway directed this mystery that stars Mark Stevens as private detective Bradford Galt, who invites his secretary Kathy(played by Lucille Ball) on a casual date to a penny arcade, when they realize that they are being followed by a man in a white suit(played by William Bendix). Galt later confronts the man and forces him to confess that he was hired by his former partner Tony Jardine(played by Kurt Krueger) to follow him. Galt becomes determined to find out why, and investigates, which leads him to his married girlfriend(played by Cathy Downs) & her Art Gallery owning husband(played by Clifton Webb) One of them is a murderer... OK mystery goes on a bit too long, but has an appealing cast and a startling scene involving a sudden push out the window!

New York private investigator Mark Stevens gets interested enough in his secretary (Lucille Ball) to take her out after work to a New York arcade where she mentions that they're being followed by a guy in a white suit (William Bendix). A true pro would never try to tail anyone while standing out in a crowd by wearing a white suit, and it turns out that this is part of a masterful plot orchestrated by wealthy art gallery owner and collector Clifton Webb to take advantage of Stevens spotted past. Of course Webb, who played a few dangerous characters (i.e. the one he played in LAURA) has a young wife (Cathy Downs) who is only in it with him for the money and gives her affection to blackmailer and social climber Kurt Kreuger who knew Stevens when they worked together in San Francisco. How Webb could have known about Stevens and Kreuger is up to speculation on the part of the viewer, but certainly if anyone could come up with such a way of getting rid of someone, Webb's character could. William Bendix stands out in his role as the hired muscle, living in a ground floor flat with a couple of cool scenes of him phoning Webb from a phone in the hallway while a little girl neighbor bothers his concentration while blowing on a kazoo. In fact the acting by everyone is restrained enough by director Henry Hathaway and the script doesn't let anyone down.

Brad (Mark Stevens) tries to work out why Fred Foss (William Bendix) is following him. He does this with the help of his secretary Kathleen (Lucille Ball). The story involves a former acquaintance of Brad's, Anthony Jardine (Kurt Kreuger), an art-collector, Hardy (Clifton Webb) and his girlfriend, Mari (Cathy Downs). Brad is framed for murder....This film is confusing. We are never given the explanation as to why anyone would want to go after Brad in the first place. The betrayal that motivates the murder doesn't take place till half-way through the film, so what on earth is the first half of the film about! Lucille Ball has no role of any substance and Mark Stevens is just not hard-looking enough to carry off a hard-man role. It's laughable when he threatens Bendix and Kreuger at different stages in the film - no way, mate, they'd both kill you! Webb is always dependable to deliver cutting lines but Downs is pathetic in a femme-fatale role - she doesn't cut it. As for the dialogue - ??! Every cliché that you could ever imagine. Expect lines from the cheesy like "I can be framed easier than Whistler's mother" and "One thing led to another, and he led with his right" to the stupid "I'm clean as a peeled egg...." It's endless. You go 2 ways with this. 1 - you take it as a joke and laugh all the way through the film; 2 - you listen to the dialogue and try and watch the film as if it is a serious noir/crime thriller film. I did the latter and it doesn't work. Finally, the plot - it's complicated because we never have a coherent story, yet every scene is predictable, eg, Hardy's meeting with Foss, and the denouement (soooo obvious!). The film also tags on a predictable clichéd happy ending. This is NOT a good film.