I've seen this film a bunch of times now and the first half is easily the most vivid - Alan Ladd, William Bendix and Hugh Beaumount as veterans back in LA; Bendix ordering "bourbon with a bourbon chaser" and showing off the metal plate in his head; Ladd meeting his wife Doris Dowling and seeing she's got a lover Howard da Silva; Dowling telling Ladd how she accidentally killed their son; Ladd being picked up as a hitchhiker by Veronica Lake; Will Wright as the slimy hotel detective; the revelation of Dowling's murder.
The second half of the film things get murkier - Raymond Chandler supposedly wrote this while drunk and while I thought that was a Hollywood urban legend the film does feel like a movie written by a super talented man getting increasingly drunk. Ladd gets abducted and is slapped around a lot; the police sort of become protagonists; Bendix thinks he dunnit; the cops shoot the killer plain dead.
It all gets messy but because its Raymond Chandler it's always entertaining - the dialogue is first rate, George Marshall's handling is vigorous and the cast is sublime. Warner Bros did the best tough guy movies of the 30s and 40s but Paramount grouped together their A team for this one: Ladd, Lake, Bendix, da Silva, Dowling, and Wright stealing the show at the eleventh hour. Lots of booze, infidelity and corruption but also mates looking out for each other and the "cleanest" Ladd-Lake romance out of their four main teamings. Easy to watch.
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