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A true physician, the eponymous character (Macdonald Carey) steps out of a cab at the center of the phosphorescent Times Square galaxy and notices the names of the cast scrolling on the news ticker. Anthony Mann's first feature, so he gives himself a doozy of an opening: Blonde (Jean Phillips) on a hotel ledge, oversized neon sign and police searchlight, a famished trouper's publicity stunt. "Just another poor butterfly broken on Broadway's dizzy wheel." She becomes his receptionist, the case at hand involves the aging racketeer (Eduardo Ciannelli) on borrowed time in search of an estranged daughter. "Help me do one square thing." Quite a tiny wonder, as fast as The Maltese Falcon and with its own vital use of shadows, an hour and change of crackerjack invention. Hoods and molls and the occasional "broken-down Cinderella," the gallery of mugs includes Warren Hymer and Sid Melton and Jack Norton. Revenge, abduction, the loot in the station locker three decades ahead of Peckinpah (The Getaway). The ultraviolet lamp at the doctor's office becomes a lethal weapon in the wrong hands, anticipating the sauna in T-Men but also, as the camera dollies in for a baleful close-up, Antonioni's artificial moon at the end of L'Eclisse. The capo (J. Carrol Naish) fronts as a clothier, and is generous with fancy hooch for his captives: "With friends, I never cut liquor." "Only throats." "That's business." New York élan, Germanic rigor (sets by Hans Dreier), "little feminine touches." It ends with a wink at the abyss, a bright flame darkened with each subsequent Mann vision. With Richard Lane, Joan Woodbury, Arthur Loft, Frank Bruno, Olin Howland, Jay Novello, Gerald Mohr, William Haade, and Mary Gordon. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |