This follow-up film toThe Wild Angels (1966)premiered at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and won the festival's award for he Best Film by a new director.The gothic, noirish and effective melodrama, with the heme of a menaced, terrorized, sheltered or threatened woman (or wife) by a deranged man (often a husband), was one of a number of similar films made in the 1940s:Alfred Hitchcock'sRebecca (1940), with Joan FontaineAlfred Hitchcock'sSuspicion (1941), with Joan FontaineRobert Stevenson'sJane Eyre (1943), with Joan FontaineAlfred Hitchcock'sShadow of a Doubt (1943), with Teresa WrightOtto Preminger'sLaura (1944), with Gene TierneyWilliam Castle'sWhen Strangers Marry (1944) (aka Betrayed), with Kim HunterJoseph H.Oakenshield's quest will fail.The darkness is coming.It will spread to every corner of the land.You are being used, Thief in the Shadows.You were only ever a means to an end.The coward Oakenshield has weighed he value of your life and found it worth nothing.The film briefly returned to Dol Guldur where cage-imprisoned Gandalf watched as Sauron marched his armored and weaponized Orc army toward the Lonely Mountain.She kissed her child one last time, and (off-screen) left a note for the ostensibly wealthy owner to raise her socially doomed baby.You do your duty and we may get along.Whatever happens, you'll do your duty.He barked chilling, staccato orders to his Master's Mate in an oft-repeated line: "Mr.Christian - come here." He cruelly and sadistically met a sailor's request for water in the hot weather: "I'll give you water.