A gold locket around the neck of a little girl. So sweet, so demure, so unlikely to trigger a nightmare of death and deceit. The Locket is a chilling film noir suffused with the vivid postwar psychological mystery that made films such as Spellbound Bijou favorites. Laraine Day stars as a woman who was denied the locket in childhood and who now turns her charms on man after man as she plots jewel theft after jewel theft and as theft ultimately leads to murder. The film's intricate use of flashbacks has earned it cult status. And icon-to-be Robert Mitchum takes an atypical role as a vulnerable artist destroyed by his love for the unstable, emotionally scarred beauty for whom nothing can replace the lost locket.
