text: I was pulled into this movie early on, much to my surprise, because I hadn't intended to watch it at all. Now I wish I hadn't. The suspense starts out well, with the hit-and-run resulting in death and the question of whether the guilty character will confess, or be found out, or (doable now, though a no-no in the old days of movie-making) get away with it. The plot's been done before--what plot hasn't--but the tensions inherent in it, with the additional complications and motivations arising out of the illicit love affair, make for an absorbing first half. Then the film abandons the hit-and-run to embark upon a misty exposition of two unrequited, all-suffering loves. The two tracks of plot--hit-and-run and unreasoning love--just don't have enough to do with each other, and that they involve the same characters doesn't bind them enough to justify the departure from the original story line. The screenwriter should have chosen one plot or the other. At the end of the film, in the midst of the movie's second funeral, I found myself thinking, "Now, what does any of this have to do with that hit-and-run?" The filmmakers may think the answer obvious, but I think the movie was plotted and executed flabbily.