 Stanwyck, he concluded, was incongruously chipper early in the film, while giving a stilted, distracted performance in the second half.Bogart was "embarrassing" with his over-acted insanity, Nigel Bruce turned in a similarly hammy performance, and Ann Carter's adult-sounding dialogue was delivered with "lugubrious" slowness.Stanwyck biographer Axel Madsen's 2001 assessment of the film was similarly poor.