Impact

Brian Donlevy is a San Francisco industrialist whose wife sends him on a drive she has arranged for him not to finish. He walks away from the wreck into a small Idaho town, a pair of overalls and Ella Raines’s garage, and lets the city put her on trial for the murder he survived. Arthur Lubin keeps the second half sunny on purpose: the noir is in what Donlevy chooses not to do. Charles Coburn’s unhurried detective does the arithmetic everyone else avoids. The picture opens on a dictionary entry for its own title. Watch for the book to close it.