This under-rated mystery is framed as a courtroom drama, but isn't; has the basic plot of film noir (a respectable bourgeois is thrown, partly through the agency of a femme fatale, into a sordid plot of adultery, fraud and death), but isn't (there is no murder; the femme fatale is quite sweet really; the film is too bright, and even becomes a Western at one stage).
Like noir, the film is most interesting as a study in deviant masculinity. Where 'They won't believe me' excels is in its male lead. most noir heroes, no matter how distasteful, have some redeeming feature - sex appeal, charisma, a way with words, a rebellious streak, rotten economic circumstances, plain rotten luck, or recognisable flaws, like lust or greed. Larry Ballentine has no redeeming feature whatsoever, too fond of the dull material comfort his dead marriage provides to truly transgress. When he finally gets round to doing something particularly bad, he makes a shoddy hames of it, even by noir standards.
The only interesting thing about him is the shockingly inappropriate white suit he wears having been introduced as a bad 'un by his own defence lawyer. This introduction leads us to expect an evil presence of Maldorer proportions, but he is just banal and selfish like every other man. His narrative style is without interest (although the narrative isn't). He is what Meursault would have been like if Camus had resisted mythologising him.
All of this makes him compelling for three reasons. Firstly, it makes you wonder what on earth two of Hollywood's most potent female presences - Susan Hayward and Jane Greer - can possibly see in this drip, never mind his fantastically wealthy wife. In particular, it makes us ponder the ONE redeeming feature that would instantly invalidate every logical objection - his, er, lovemaking prowess. Mmmm.
Secondly, such a singularly amoral character provokes Hollywood into a perverse fit of morality. Ballentine cannot be punished for murder - he hasn't killed anyone - and yet, in Hollywood terms, he is a monster, and must pay for his transgression. So, for run-of-the-mill cupidity, Hollywood sends him to Hell! In Christian terms Ballentine knows he is guilty of crimes worse than murder; to evade the law's leniance, he judges himself, and attempts suicide, effectively damning himself by the same ethical system that prompted conscience in the first place! This film takes the letter/spirit-of-the-law debate into interesting new areas.
Most importantly, the film marks the transition from film noir to the 1950s male melodrama. Where the first was a largely metaphorical expression of psychological anxieties, the latter analysed more tangible, social and economic pressures: the expectation of men to be both socially conformist and aggressively breadwinning; and the emasculating results of this. Films like 'Bigger Than Life' and 'Some Came Running' dramatise this violent conflict between opposing social roles - the individualist, powerful man, and the man of family and society. Even before the Eisenhower era began, Larry Ballentine, after much hesitation, dared to say no. this was his real crime.
