It's not the most artistic poster (way too crowded a field) but it's a heck of a movie. It's a familiar film noir subject: guy (in this case), Eddie Rico, a former mobster, tries to go straight, but his past catches up with him. The first couple of scenes establish him as legitimate businessman and husband. In fact, the director, the ever-reliable Phil Karlson, pushes the Code envelope when Eddie and Alice (Dianne Foster) wake in separate beds (as required by the Legion of Decency) and he reaches over and lays his hand just an inch or so from her benightgowned right breast. (Makes me wonder how much negotiation was required with the censors: "Can he put his hand here? How about here? Above? Below?") And then when Eddie playfully asks Alice why she married him, she answers rather forthrightly, "I was a girl. I wanted to be a woman." Whoa, how did Karlson slip that one through? Did the censors not understand?
Discussion of prudery is relevant, because censorship spoils the ending of the film. It's grim gangland world into which Eddie is reluctantly thrust. Everyone lies, no one can be trusted, every conversation reeks of menace, and violence is ubiquitous and casual. In the showdown, Eddie is wounded and survives, but every element in the logic of film requires that he die. The tacked-on happy ending, in which a headline proclaims that the gang has been destroyed and Eddie and Alice enjoy connubial bliss, is false, and, I think, even insulting to the intelligence of the viewer. Better to ignore it, or, better still, turn off the tv just three minutes before the end, because the first 87 minutes are just terrific.
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