For the best in stylish, upper-crust 40s murder mystery, there are really only two choices: Laura and The Unsuspected. The former has a reputation as a timeless classic; the latter is much, much darker and far more satisfying as a film noir, but remains underappreciated.

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You won't find any of these things in The Unsuspected. What you have instead is the noir mastery of director Michael Curtiz and cinematographer Woody Bredell, who take aspects of the Laura plotline into new levels of intricacy and darkness, fueled by an almost lapidary sense of frame and scene construction. The camerawork and lighting in The Unsuspected, particularly in the studio scenes (inside the Croton mansion where most of the action takes place) is possibly the most sublimely sinister cinematography in the entire noir canon.

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What we have here is the apex of noir style wedded to the glossy studio system approach. From a formalist perspective, The Unsuspected is unquestionably in the top ten of "best photographed noirs." That doesn't make it a great picture - it's merely very, very good - but it makes it one that will give lasting pleasure to those who respond to noir's unique visual allure.