The three principal actors, Orson Welles, Juliette Gréco, and Bradford Dillman, play dual roles in two interconnected stories as the participants in two love triangles.

The script was credited to by producer Darryl F. Zanuck (under his frequent pseudonym "Mark Canfield"), but in his 1993 autobiography Just Tell Me When to Cry, Fleischer revealed that it was ghostwritten by the blacklisted Jules Dassin.

In a party at a stately home, prosperous attorney Lamerciere's guests include his longtime mistress Florence and his young law partner Claude.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Howard Thompson wrote: "A determined try for something different—three performers playing six roles, as two adulterous triangles explode in a murder trial—misfires coldly and rather hollowly ...

There is certainly no cause to evaluate this extremely devious, visual charade by such a brilliant courtroom yardstick as 'Compulsion,' also involving director Fleischer, Messrs. Welles and Dillman and the Zanuck production banner.