AlfredScott’s review published on Letterboxd:
Carroll Baker plays Mary Ann, a girl whose life spirals toward suicide after she is sexually assaulted. She tells her mother "everyone is dirty." She is disconnected from the world and walks away from her life. She is saved by Mike (Ralph Meeker), who proceeds to keep her captive. He later tells Mary Ann she's his last chance.
As Sheila O'Malley says in the booklet included in the Criterion Collection DVD, the film is full of "evocative silences." Some people will probably find the film unbearably slow and quiet. Others will consider it well ahead of its time or akin to a foreign film. The photography is like a postcard of early 1950s New York City.
Director Jack Garfein is part of the famous American Actors' Studio and some of the extra features on the DVD elaborate on this aspect. O'Malley explains how Garfein and the Actors' Studio were attempting to express "our inner, wordless anguish; contradictory feelings; and involuntary sensations ... voicelessly, through concrete human expressions."
Watch for Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker in "All in the Family") and Doris Roberts (from "Everybody Love Raymond" and other sitcoms) in major roles.