Mr. Mason (Humphrey Bogart) wants to kill his wife, because he's in love with her younger sister. He succeeds, and seems to have covered his bases. Unless, of course, Katherine (Rose Hobart) isn't dead. Maybe their good friend (Sydney Greenstreet) can help. Or maybe he won't.
You've seen this story before, where the murderer is gradually driven nuts by the fear the person they killed isn't actually dead. Watching it, the film gives a clear signal the moment Mason makes a mistake, and who recognizes it. After that, you know what's coming.
Which is fine, if the movie does it in an interesting way. And for the most part it does. It's an early noir film, so lots of long shadows and tight shots. There were a couple in particular that were very nicely done. When Katherine finds a parked car blocking the road and the camera slowly pans right to a figure in the trees, little more than a shadowy outline. There's another when Mason enters a pawn shop to find out what's up with a ticket he received in the mail. And probably several more besides that, but those are the two that stuck out the most.
It's not an essential film as noir or Bogart* movies go, but it's not bad at all.
* Bogart apparently hated filming it because a movie where a husband kills his wife was not the thing for him to be doing at a point when his marriage with his wife was falling apart. The movie was filmed in '43, held up in litigation and not released until '45 - by which time he'd married Lauren Bacall instead - and by then, the studio had him film another movie with basically the same plot but the details changed to try and avoid litigation. He only did that film because he really wanted to work with Barbara Stanwyck. The stuff the TCM people tell you about the movies are sometimes more interesting than the movies they're talking about.
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