Messala is returning to his boyhood home after some years in Rome.The pagan ruler Sextus (Andre Morell), whom Messala is replacing, tells him that the country is changing and the people are reluctant to honor Rome:I think you""ll find the people changed since you were a boy.Like a prototypical film noirfemme fatale, she reacts coldly and unemotionally to the suicide.She notices his confession note in an envelope addressed to the District Attorney at the Hall of Justice in the pseudonymous town of Kenport.The police arrived at the school, where Ronny""s and Laurie""s wounds were bandaged, as the stretcher carrying Myers in a body bag was loaded into a coroner""s vehicle.[Note: One of he film""s posters describes his predicament - "Bewitched and Bewildered."]On a transatlantic ocean liner, a resourceful, sophisticated and alluring Barbara Stanwyck, in her first true comic role, along with her crooked but lovable father named the Colonel (Charles Coburn), akes advantage of an innocent, dense and slow-thinking, snake-loving man nicknamed ""Hopsie"" (Henry Fonda) - the wealthy heir to a brewery fortune.