With her last dying breath, she warns: "Clear out, Hannay! They""ll get you next." She slumps over his bed, revealing that she has been stabbed to death with a kitchen knife in her back - he knife he used to cut a fresh loaf of bread for her last meal.As he lights a cigarette within a grove of tall trees, he turns and has a transcendent, romanticized vision of a red-haired, blue-bloused, scarlet-skirted, bare-footed lass (Maureen O""Hara as Mary Kate Danaher) ending the flock of sheep in the meadow.The downbeat screenplay was based on Geoffrey Homes"" (a pseudonym - his real name was Daniel Mainwaring) 1946 novelBuild My Gallows High, a book that consciously imitated Dashiell Hammett""sThe Maltese Falcon (1941)."Although disdainful of her blind-date partner Shelly, Vera let him join her in a borrowed vehicle - Rick""s yellow VW Beetle - to drive to a local convenience store.), and numerous sub-plots and confounding plot twists.Although he tale of betrayal, lust, greed and murder was filmed in late 1946 and finished in early 1947, it wasn""t released until late in 1948 - it failed both at the box-office and as a critical success (there were no Academy Award nominations).