Unmarried Barbara Stanwyck is pregnant by gangster Lyle Bettger. She's on a train with equally pregnant Phyllis Thaxter and her husband. They're on their way to meet his parents in a small town. Miss Thaxter gives Miss Stanwyck her wedding ring to hold while she goes to the rest room, and then there's a wreck, and everyone is killed except Miss Stanwyck. Dazed, she's met at the station by Henry O'Neill, Jane Cowl, and their surviving son, John Lund. They think she's their daughter-in-law, so she settles down into the bizarre situation.... until Bettger shows up, with blackmail on his mind.
It's the bizarre situation you'd expect in a movie derived from a Cornell Woolrich novel, but in the hands of director Mitchell Leisen and screenwriters Sally Benson and Catherine Turney, it concentrates more on the characters and their gemutlich setting, clearly the sort of thing that Miss Benson had contributed to Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT. But even more impressive is the camera watching Miss Stanwyck think.
It's the bizarre situation you'd expect in a movie derived from a Cornell Woolrich novel, but in the hands of director Mitchell Leisen and screenwriters Sally Benson and Catherine Turney, it concentrates more on the characters and their gemutlich setting, clearly the sort of thing that Miss Benson had contributed to Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT. But even more impressive is the camera watching Miss Stanwyck think.