Crime of passion films that rely on murky psychological variants within the "who-done-it" narrative structure rather than a more direct manifestation of a "deadly sin" (greed, lust, envy) are almost always going to seem "less noir" than those which do: and there's a little formula in the meter that tries to take that into account and create a revised raw number score that reflects the "noir feel" of a film. That measure has LIGHTING down in the low 90s...
Lenore Coffee's work leaned much more to the melodrama side of things, and this was only her second writing assignment that veered in the direction of noir (the first was another overheated King Vidor melodrama, BEYOND THE FOREST). The third time was clearly the charm in terms of making "the full veer," and it came the next year with SUDDEN FEAR, her only collaboration with Joan Crawford. I haven't confirmed this, but Coffee may be the only woman screenwriter in the 40s who wrote scripts for Davis, Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck (1942's THE GAY SISTERS).
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