she return to the still loving but honest and dull Jansen. Cast John Payne as Ben Grace Rhonda Fleming as June Lyons Arlene Dahl as Dorothy Lyons Kent Taylor as Frank Jansen Ted de Corsia as Solly Caspar Lance Fuller as Gauss Buddy Baer as Lenhardt Ellen Corby as June Lyons' Maid (uncredited) Frank Gerstle as Detective Lt. Dave Dietz (uncredited) Myron Healey as Wilson - Caspar Thug (uncredited) Background The film was made when prolific director Allan Dwan was seventy years old. Dwan directed 386 films in his long career and his first work was the silent short Strategy, produced in 1911. Cinematography According to critic Blake Lucas the film was made with a modest budget, and yet the film is richly colored and well decorated and is one of the best of the Dwan-Alton pictures. Lucas wrote, "Alton's imagination in lighting is as distinctive in color as it is in black and white." Alton uses extensive shadows and large black areas, and he accentuates an array of pinks, greens, and especially the color orange. The end result is a startling effect in many of the scenes, all in Technicolor. Critical reception Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, was caustic about the casting and the adaptation of Cain's novel, and wrote: "Rhonda Fleming and a laughably kittenish Arlene Dahl, are a couple of on-the-make sisters, and the fellow, played by John Payne, is an on-the-make big-time gangster. In the end all their faces are red. So, we say, should be the faces of the people responsible for this film, which is said to have been taken from a novel (unrecognizable) of James M. Cain. For it is an exhausting lot of twaddle about crime and city politics, an honest mayor, his secretary-mistress, her kleptomaniacal sister and the fellow who wants to get control of the gang. Critic and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was kinder to the film, placing it fifth in his list of the best films of 1956 in Cahiers du Cinéma. See also List of American films of 1956 References External links 1956 films 1956 crime films Color film noir Films based on American novels Films based on works by James M. Cain Films directed by Allan Dwan American mystery films 1950s English-language films 1950s American films American crime films