It took years before Hollywood was brave enough to adapt James M. Cain’s swift and sordid fable of adultery and murderous deceit, and Lucino Visconti was there first with his path-breaking Ossessione (1943). No less important, however, is Tay Garnett’s polished rendition, which gives an Edward Hopper sheen and ominous shadows to the roadside diner, an overdetermined and iconic symbol of Cain’s dark vision of desire and capitalism. John Garfield is the quintessential noir antihero, brimming with raw masculinity yet reduced to trembling flesh by the siren call, and rolling lipstick, of Lana Turner’s doe-eyed femme fatale.