The Accused isn't a whodunit, because William Dieterle (I'll Be Seeing You, Portrait of Jennie) reveals the culprit from the outset. Though often classified as a film noir, that descriptor isn't completely accurate either. Instead, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ketti Frings' adaptation of June Truesdell's 1947 novel Be Still, My Love, plays more like a woman's picture in the guise of a noir. This is especially because cinematographer Milton R. Krasner (a favorite of Fritz Lang and Joseph L. Mankiewicz) employs an Alfred Hitchcock-like look with nighttime scenes so dark, that it can be hard to make everything out. Notably, most of the principal cast had or would work with Hitchcock.
The action takes place in a California coastal town where Wilma Tuttle, an unmarried woman in her 30s, works as a psychology professor. Dieterle introduces her hitchhiking in disguise before backtracking to the event that led to such a desperate measure. Mere hours before, her uneventful life took a turn when she accepted a ride from Bill (Rope's Douglas Dick), an abrasive, inappropriate student. When he waylays her after class, even though she had declined his offer to meet, Wilma misses her bus.
On the ride home, he insists on a late-night swim. She demurs, but when he attempts to have his way with her, she strikes him with a tire iron—until he dies. She returns home by way of a chatty truck driver. Now a murderer, she opts not to tell the police, possibly for fear they won't buy her claim of self-defense. She attempts to get on with her life, but her increasing paranoia, expressed in an inner monologue, makes that difficult.
Her precarious reprieve ends when she receives visits from Bill's guardian, Warren Ford (Saboteur's Robert Cummings), an attorney, and Lt. Ted Dorgan (Rear Window's Wendell Corey), a detective. One thinks she's innocent and the other doesn't, but both men find her attractive, a characteristic they share with the victim. As a sign of the times, they express amazement that a beautiful woman can be both single and smart.
A romance ensues with Ford, but Dorgan ropes in associates, like forensic scientist Dr. Romley (The Asphalt Jungle's Sam Jaffe), to prove her guilt. Ford also defends her in court, one of the film's few missteps, since it isn't exactly great form for an attorney to represent a client with whom they have a relationship.
Though Dieterle had originally sought Barbara Stanwyck, who declined the role, Young (Oscar winner for 1947's The Farmer's Daughter) rises to the occasion, splitting the difference between sympathetic, because she's a caring woman caught in a difficult situation, and deceitful, because she lies and fakes evidence. It lends Wilma an ambiguity not always common in the era. To quote the original New York Times review, The Accused proves "a super-duper psychological job." In an ironic twist, Douglas Dick, the film's mentally-unhinged antagonist, would leave acting behind in 1971 to become a psychologist. Recommended for classic film collections.