Ms. Davis never liked this slow, overdone melodrama, and she was not alone. Critics massacred it with extreme prejudice across the country when it was released. This was the final film on Davis' Warner Bros. contract, and a rotten way for such a great lady to exit. Davis plays a bitchy
young woman in a small midwest town who is married to Cotten, a pleasant but dull physician. Davis has the hots for Brian, a wealthy manufacturer from Chicago. She leaves home and goes to Chicago to meet Brian, who rebuffs her, saying that he intends on marrying a wealthy socialite. Defeated,
Davis returns to her boring life with Cotten. Brian changes his mind, dumps the socialite, and tells Davis she must divorce her husband and marry him. This conversation is heard by Watson, caretaker at Brian's hunting lodge. Davis is now pregnant by Cotten, and Watson threatens to tell Brian of
her impending motherhood. Davis kills Watson and makes it look accidental. Now she tells Cotten that she's leaving him for Brian. He refuses to allow her to go until after his child is born. She knows he can perform an abortion, but he steadfastly refuses so she jumps off an embankment. A
miscarriage takes place, but Davis develops peritonitis. Why her condition goes unchecked is never explained, but in a feverish state, she gets out of bed, and staggers toward the train station to catch the express to Chicago. She never makes it, dying on the street in much the same way Cagney did
in so many other Warner Bros. films. The comeuppance is achieved. Davis overplays this so much that she appears to be a female impersonator doing Bette Davis. She's a psychopathic slut with absolutely no redeeming virtues. How anyone could have approved this script for shooting is a mystery.
