The movie is too brainy for a melodrama and not sufficiently gripping for a crime thriller. A fashion to invite English actresses to play girls from a deep South resulted in a perfect English of a "marsh girl" obtained through a few language lessons from her suitor. And the heroine dresses as a contemporary Hollywood starlet for an audition. This is vaguely explained as her receiving Church donations from the public in the not-so-wealthy Southern town collected by a supportive wife of a black store owner -- supposedly from a segregated congregation. Swamp house of an unemployed alcoholic looks inside like an illustration to the "House and Country". It would be more interesting, if the authors abscond the ending of the book and make a heroine's Army brother or the shopkeeper's wife as a murderer.
