The film is based on the novel The Pitfall by Jay Dratler and stars Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, and Jane Wyatt, and features Raymond Burr.

John "Johnny" Forbes (Dick Powell) works for the Olympic Mutual Insurance Company in downtown Los Angeles.

Gifts to his girlfriend, Santa Monica model Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), include a speedboat named Tempest.

She borrows a co-worker's car, having decided to go to Forbes' home to visit him and take him some food; she gets his address from a card in the briefcase.

She arrives at the moment when the doctor, Forbes' wife Sue (Jane Wyatt), and their son Tommy (Jimmy Hunt) are all outside.

Mac visits Smiley in prison and drops broad hints that Mona has been fooling around with the insurance adjuster.

She visits him the day before and he angrily asks about both Mac and Forbes; he sees that she is not wearing the engagement ring he had given her with the stolen funds.

At home, Sue, who has not believed the story that her husband told her about being beaten up by muggers, probes him to tell her what is on his mind.

Over her objections, and after walking the streets all night, he also makes a full confession to the District Attorney (John Litel).

According to Madeleine Stowe, guest host on the May 21, 2016, Turner Classic Movies screening of the film, the production was in trouble because the script violated the Hays Code, as the adulterer was insufficiently punished.

When director de Toth found out, he met with two senior Hays Code members, whom he had selected with care.

Film critic Fernando F. Croce wrote about the screenplay and direction,The title's abyss, pitilessly moral, sprawls horizontally rather than vertically, a lateral track following disheveled Dick Powell bottoming out, wandering the streets after confessing murder and adultery to wife Jane Wyatt.

Fate may be at play, yet André de Toth's grip is less determinist than humanist, airtight but wounded, each pawn in the grid allowed trenchant space to deepen the fallout of their own actions.