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The sidewalk doesn't so much end as merge with the gutter, that's Otto Preminger's noir city, the camera tilts down from the scrawled titles and there's the sewer. (Lynch throws a light on this in Blue Velvet's celebrated overture.) The police and the war are parallel histories of violence, the patrolling hothead (Dana Andrews) who must "try to learn not to hate hoods so much" trades blows with the ex-soldier (Craig Stevens) with a box of medals and underworld connections. A Texas millionaire dies at a floating crap game, the battleground hero is framed and suffers a cracked skull after a scuffle with the detective, who dumps the corpse in the river. The crime goes on to encompass the dead man's estranged wife (Gene Tierney) and her cabbie father (Tom Tully) while the oleaginous mobster (Gary Merrill) holds court in Turkish baths. Amid the curves and loops of "comic-strip stuff," a superb minute of stillness: Dissolve from night to dawn seen through a grilled police station window, quick pan to Andrews hunched over a pile of cigarettes, squashed by guilt and fear. "I'll fix your head." "I suggest you use an ax." A beautiful system of obsessions, a Ben Hecht blueprint charged by some of Preminger's most penetrating camerawork, triangular setups modulating from medium shots to close-ups and back in extended takes. Not a nightmare (Lang's The Woman in the Window) but a purgation, the tormented cop who exorcises his crooked father's shadow by riding the gangland elevator, busting his doppelgänger and admitting his guilt under his sweetheart's gaze. All that, plus a remarkably succinct evocation of marriage in a couple of shots or so, a midnight visit to the detective's partner (Bert Freed) that leaves an indelible imprint of domestic irritation and resilience. Lumet's The Offence holds up a mirror. With Karl Malden, Ruth Donnelly, Don Appell, and Neville Brand. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |