A black-and-white noir directed by Jules Dassin (Night and the City (1950), Rififi (1955)). Notionally-Greek Richard Conte (later Barzini in The Godfather (1972)) returns to Fresno from the war to find his sweetheart (Barbara Lawrence) waiting and father (Morris Carnovsky) in need of some justice. This leads him to finance a possibly-shonky operation with Millard Mitchell that involves them driving trucks from an apple orchard to the badlands of the markets of San Francisco. There he encounters sharky trader Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront (1954), 12 Angry Men (1957)) who has engaged the services of foxy Italianate streetwalker-with-a-heart-of-gold Valentina Cortese (The Visit (1964), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)) to distract him and us at critical moments. Most of the characters are of uncertain virtue.
Things get a bit racy (he gets his shirt off and so does she) and violent. It seems to endorse migrants marrying migrants because those settled in the U.S. for longer just want your money but don't have the courtesy to ask for or take it. The trucking aspect put me in mind of The Wages of Fear (1953). It's not always engrossing but it was always possible that it could have been.
