![]() Hayward plays the role to feisty perfection, and such was her cloaked malevolence that I half-expected her to crop up at the film's end, having somehow faked her own death, stolen Ballentine's money and skipped off to South America. The couple, at least initially, have no delusions about their relationship: Verna is in it for his money, and he's in it for the sex (this theme, owing to the Production Code, is dealt with tastefully). Verna Carlson (Susan Hayward), Ballentine's mistress, is a slick and crafty money-grabber. Greta (Rita Johnson) is Ballentine's husband, an upright and charismatic businesswoman from a wealthy family, who knows both how her husband operates, and how she can control him with the promise of money. The story is told in flashback, as Ballentine, the accused in a murder trial, recounts his side of the incident, a last-ditch attempt to save his own neck. Played with lazy cocksureness by Robert Young – a vague combination of Robert Mitchum and Ray Milland – our main protagonist may not have committed homicide, but he was still guilty of so much more. ![]() The film, which characterises the noir style down to the letter, is similar in tone to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), as a sympathetic but morally-suspect man is drawn, not-altogether-reluctantly, into a destructive web of deceit and murder, though not entirely through the lure of a beautiful woman Ballentine frequently digs his own grave here. Irving Pichel's They Won't Believe Me (1947) is a wonderful little-known film noir, a sardonic dissection of the mechanics of Fate, and a stark profile of a wretchedly corrupt, amoral and ultimately doomed personality. Love, sex or money? This is the fatal question faced by Larry Ballentine, a compulsively adulterous husband with dollar signs where he ought to have a heart. WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow!!! Starring: Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Jane Greer, Rita Johnson, Tom Powers, George Tyne, Frank Ferguson Written by: Gordon McDonell (story), Jonathan Latimer (screenplay)
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