[4] The screenplay was written by fellow blacklisted writer Ben Barzman and adapted from the 1953 play Someone Waiting by Emlyn Williams.

With the help of his son's steadfast solicitor, Graham desperately, and often ineffectively, investigates the circumstances surrounding the girl's murder, visiting first her furious sister and then the home of wealthy car magnate Robert Stanford, where the girlfriend was killed.

Graham ricochets between potential allies, foes and new leads in order to learn who the real murderer could be, with suspects including Stanford's beautiful wife Honor, his even younger secretary Vickie Harker and his adopted son who's Alec's best friend, Brian, who allows Graham to see what his own misspent life looked like through his son's eyes.

With the Home Office on standby to receive any evidence proving Alec's innocence, Graham is forced to extreme measures to try to establish the real killer's guilt.

The style of the film is immediately recognisable – the exaggerated hysteria which characterised Losey's American work (M and The Big Night).

The key scenes are heightened to a pitch which the script will hardly sustain; the characters are continually occupied with feverish, cinematic "'business" (newspaper editors punctuating their conversation with dart-throwing, a drunken old woman in a crowded room full of alarm clocks).

The handling of the interestingly varied cast is creditable: Michael Redgrave gives a sensitive and accomplished interpretation of the difficult role of the introspective alcoholic.