"Murder, My Sweet" is another happy product of Hollywood's new policy of providing basically grade B detective yarns with skilled directors and adequate budgets to turn out entertaining, if unsophisticated screen fare. Although "Murder, My Sweet" does not measure up to the high standard set by "Laura"--which it seeks to imitate--it is nevertheless a welcome and wholesale relief from the sagas of bullets and blackjacks so long advertised as "second big hit."

Confusion is the keynote of a plot that includes larceny, blackmail, multiple murder, and the whodunit show's inevitable quota of hardboiled--romance. Director Eduard Dmytryk has handled this turbulent story, with its emphasis on strangulation, cudgeling and other more ingenious forms of violence, with good taste extraordinary for Hollywood.

No one will accuse "Murder, My Sweet" of being cinematic art, but perhaps Hollywood has less trouble with pure entertainment than with art. In spite of its faults, if not for them, the production must be classed among the rightful box-office successes of the year. ps