NO QUESTIONS ASKED (1951)

A black widow without a mate is just another spider.

A man is on the run through the wet, deserted streets of lower Manhattan. He scuttles into the shadows cast by a stairwell just as a prowl car tears by, its siren whining against concrete and brick. As the man hunkers down we hear his voice, “My name is Steve Keiver. That’s what all the sirens are about. They’re screaming for me. I was very popular that night—everybody wanted me, dead or alive. You think there’d be a thousand hiding places in a large city, but there aren’t.” More police cars make the scene, closing off any possible egress, their searchlights obliterating the deep dark. As Steve presses his back against the grimy recess of a doorway, the narration turns inevitably to the source of his dilemma, “You wonder how it happened and where it all really began…”

Steve (Barry Sullivan) is an insurance company lawyer who gets the brushoff from his girlfriend Ellen (Arlene Dahl), owing to the fact that his present salary won’t set her up in diamonds and pearls. A telling exchange early in the picture provides the straight dope on their shaky relationship. The scene finds their pair bickering during a taxicab ride home from the airport. Steve believes—what a chump—Ellen’s been on a solo ski trip to Sun Valley:

Her: “I’m not a one-room flat kind of girl. I don’t want to raise my children in the kind of poverty I was raised in. I couldn’t stand it. I want security.”

Him: “If you’re just patient honey—“

Her: “—I’ve waited a year. You can’t deposit patience in a bank.”

Him: “We’re never gonna be rich, that’s not security. But we love each other, you can deposit that in my bank.”

Steve asks for a raise the following day, but his boss parries: “Ladders are built for patient men,” the guy says. However, the boss also makes an offhand remark about a recent stolen fur case: he’d pay ten grand to the thieves, no questions asked, in order to avoid settling the claim. Steve gets a big zinger: he’ll find out who heisted the furs and broker a deal between them and the insurance company. He’ll receive a finder’s fee and everyone will be happy: the thieves will get more for the goods than a backroom fence would pay, his boss dodges a six-figure payout, and Steve’ll have enough in the bank to give Ellen a swimming pool full of sparklies. Unbeknownst to him—what a maroon—it’s already too late. Ellen just eloped to Europe with Gordon Jessman (Dick Simmons), a smooth operator she met on the slopes in Idaho. Steve is crushed when he discovers Ellen’s deserted apartment.

Steve contacts the crime syndicate and eventually manages to buy back the furs for the insurance company. It isn’t long before he’s finessing a deal over another caché of stolen goods, and then another, and another. Before long he’s flush. With Ellen out of the picture, Steve finally notices Joan (Jean Hagen), a coworker. Joan’s a nice girl. Steve—what an idiot—should be so lucky. She knows that Steve is walking a tightrope in his new venture, but she’s been carrying a torch for so long that she can’t help going along.

Cut to the gala premiere of a Broadway show. Two henchmen from the stable of gangster Franko (Howard Petrie), pull off a lurid robbery. In full-on drag-mode, they crash the powder room during intermission and relieve all the old broads of their Harry Winstons. During the fracas Joan gets pistol-whipped, leading the cops to think Steve might be in on the caper. What’s more is that the boys in blue have already named Steve Public Enemy Numero Uno—New York’s bad boys are stealing more than ever now that they know Steve can broker a high-dollar insurance company buy-back. Our guy Stevie may be a slick solicitor who knows how to walk the line between legal and illegal, but he’s forgotten all about the difference between legality and morality. It’s gonna cost him.

You didn’t think we were through with Ellen, did you? When she gets wind of Steve’s success, she gives Gordon the heave-ho and heads for Steve’s place, where she learns that he’s about to handle the buy-back of the loot from the Broadway premiere heist. Gordon—a cuckold but no fool—decides to rob Steve and take the jewels for himself. In doing so he kills a police detective and frames Steve as the trigger man. Already leery of cops, Steve runs. Real time and flashback coalesce as the film returns to its opening scene, with Steve clawing at the shadows in the cheap side of town.

Meanwhile, Ellen and Gordon are frantically packing their bags when Franko’s men arrive, expecting to find Steve and the jewels. Ellen thinks they can sell the jewelry bundle back to Franko, and she and Gordon go along willingly to negotiate a deal. This is where No Questions Asked becomes something special. Folks, take my advice: don’t mess about with gangsters. Pretty simple, huh? Not to stuck-ups like Ellen and Gordon, who think their nice clothes make them smarter than the lower-class types. Instead they’re amateurs who are about to learn one of film noir’s most brutal lessons. Dig them trying to handle Franko:

Her: “How much are they worth to you?”

Him: “How much are they worth to you? I don’t think I’m going to have to pay anything for them Mrs. Jessman. You’ve got the jewels—I’ve got you.”

Her: “If anything happens to me you’ll never find those jewels.”

Him: “You’re smart, but you made a big mistake: I never went to Vassar. I’m afraid you’re dealing with dirty people. When we get finished with you you’re going to be begging to tell us where those jewels are.”

Franko makes with some torture; Gordon pisses his pants and squeals. Ellen prostests. Ellen blubbers. Ellen screams. Franko puts a bullet in her. Ellen dead. Gordon looks on in stupified horror. Franko puts a bullet in him. Gordon dead. It’s one of the most matter-of-fact and chilling death sequences in the entire history of film noir.

Steve—what a cluck—stumbles in and decides he wants to fight. He and Franko somehow go head over heels into a swimming pool. Too bad for Steve, but we learned earlier in the picture—for real!—that Franko’s special thing is holding his breath for a really long time. Boffo! Franko triumphs. Steve floats, all glassy-eyed. Enter the cops. They cuff everyone, resuscitate Steve, and then cuff him too. They figured out he didn’t pull the trigger on the dead cop, but he’s an accessory whether you like it or not. Joan hates it. The cops tells her that Steve looking at a two year jolt in Rykers. 

Let’s get something straight about the noir femme fatale: she can’t exist without her special guy. And not just any old schlub—he’s got to be screwy enough to throw away everything he’s got and everything he believes in just to have her. In No Questions Asked, Ellen Jessman is that rare girl, a bona fide femme fatale. She’s greedy, manipulative, superficial, immoral, and exists to make Steve sacrifice his place in the world in order to satisfy her material whims. Irredeemable, and yet she’s merely one side of the coin—she’s got to have her man. Steve is every bit the archetypal a film noir protagonist. Like so many others before him, he suffers from the simple, fatal inability to resist a girl who’s no good. He sees it all clearly and still can’t help himself. Wasn’t Walter Neff the blueprint? When given a clear choice between a nice girl and vampire, Steve does the noir schmuck thing and chooses sex (and redheads). 

But because Ellen is beyond redemption she’s killed, along with her cowardly and murderous husband. Steve is murdered too, but just for a little while. He traded an honest career for a fast buck and gambled the good girl for adultery with the bad. Fate holds Steve—what a dumbass—accountable for his choices. His career is kaput, but maybe with luck and early parole for good behavior Joan’ll be waiting for him outside the gates. In the movies at least, the good ones wait.

In spite of the title’s admonition, there’s still one question left as the end titles roll: When all is said and done, does Steve really get wise or is he the same sucker as before? With Ellen dead we’ll never know.

No Questions Asked (1951)

Directed by Harold Kress

(Also one of Hollywood’s legendary film editors, recipient of two Academy Awards*: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, The Yearling, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Silk Stockings, How the West was Won*, The Poseiden Adventure, The Towering Inferno*.)

Cinematographer: Harold Lipstein

(Significant films as DP: The River’s Edge, Pal Joey, Ride a Crooked Trail, Hell is for Heroes.)
Story: Berne Giler

Screenplay: Sidney Sheldon

Starring: Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, George Murphy, Jean Hagen.

Released by: MGM

Running time: 80 minutes

CHAMPION (1949)

Champion is usually described as a cautionary tale about the bitter price of ruthless ambition. Rubbish. The character of Midge Kelly is heroic, admirable, and downright glorious. A rotten son of a bitch? Certainly. But I envy him, and you should too.

Champion airs from time to time on TCM and has been available on DVD for ages, so this essay assumes that you know the film. Besides, you just can’t dig into this thing without considering the ending — proceed knowing that spoilers await. For those who need a refresher, the story goes like this: Michael “Midge” Kelly (Kirk Douglas) and his brother Connie (Arthur Kennedy) are heading west in search of their fortune when they get rolled and are forced to thumb it. They cadge a ride from a palooka (John Day) on his way to fight a main event in Kansas City. Hoping to earn a quick buck, Midge takes a fill-in spot on the undercard. He’s beaten badly but catches the eye of manager Tommy Haley (that noir-iest of actors, Paul Stewart), who offers to Mickey him into a real fighter. When Midge and Connie reach Cali and discover their prospects vanished they are compelled to find scut work in a roadhouse. Both are attracted to a waitress, Emma (Ruth Roman), who Midge is forced to marry in the wake of a tryst. Feeling trapped, Midge eighty-sixes Emma and scrams for L.A., where he takes Haley up on his offer. Midge’s toughness and ambition make him a natural in the ring, and soon he rates a bout with number one contender Johnny Dunne, the same cat who taxied him into Kansas City. Midge is ordered to take a dive in trade for a legit title shot down the line, but he stuns everyone when he batters an unsuspecting Dunne. Although irate gamblers get their revenge, Midge’s refusal to cheat makes him appear heroic and he gets a title shot anyway, which he wins. Now standing on top of the heap, Midge alienates everyone around him. When he gives Dunne a rematch, he takes a terrific beating — until the jeering crowd and the ringside announcers spur him to final victory. Staggered, leering, and triumphant, Midge returns to his dressing room where he collapses and dies.


Everyone involved scores points for making a great picture about an asshole, but Kirk Douglas deserves the lion’s share of the credit. His Midge Kelly is one the most interesting and complicated boxers in screen history, which is a significant accomplishment considering how droll the character likely would have been in the hands (gloves?) of a lesser talent. Champion was a landmark early Douglas landmark film and justly earned him an Academy Award nomination. Most of what has been written about the movie praises his virtuoso performance or affirms the film’s status as a morality tale. While Douglas is indeed the stuff of legend, the “What Price Fame?” angle just doesn’t wash. Champion is a coldly cynical movie about a hard-as-nails tough guy; made during an era when all the little kids didn’t get a trophy. If it were merely a cautionary tale it would have ended differently: with Midge dead and defeated in the center of the ring. Redemption? No, thanks. An apology tour? Piss off. Midge Kelly isn’t redeemed at the end of Champion — he’s validated. Let’s come back to this later, first Douglas deserves his due.

Kirk Douglas was a great performer who, if nothing else, understood what made him a movie star. He was blessed and cursed with a hyper-magnetic screen presence. Everything about him was just...exaggerated. No actress could wrest the spotlight from him, which is why he isn’t remembered as one of the great romantic leads. Don’t buy it? Next time you watch him in a love scene and things start to heat up, take note of who grabs your attention. It’ll be Douglas. That was his great gift: he was bigger than the story, bigger than his cast, bigger than his directors. His innate arrogance was his greatest asset. He’s cast perfectly here. 

Let’s get back to Midge. Here’s a Depression-era kid who came up tough. His father took a powder in the first round of Midge’s life. And his mother, unable to keep both her sons, sent Midge to the orphanage and kept Connie at home. Midge grew up abandoned and institutionalized, on the losing end of a low-rent Sophie’s choice. Then with adulthood came the war and the bloody hell of combat. This is a guy who’d been rolled, robbed, cheated, chastised, red-taped, taken for granted, swindled, and sent to war. How would you handle it? After Midge mustered out he took on the thankless role of provider for his mother and little brother, and bore no grudge. Sure, he stepped on people along the way, but didn’t he get stepped on first? In spite of it all, he’s probably the most upbeat character in the film. He raised himself out of a hellish upbringing through his own grit to become the champion of the world. All he wanted out of life was the respect of other men offered by success in the ring. Boxing exacts a steep price in exchange for that success, and Midge saw clearer more plainly those around him that he’d ultimately have to pay it. If success left Midge feeling entitled yet emotionally crippled, who can blame him? 

Who does he hurt? The story places Midge in the arms of three different women. First with Emma, the wife/waitress whom he deserts. Of the film’s women, she’s the most deserving of happiness, which she ultimately finds with Connie. Although she married Midge, she understood going in that he didn’t love her. Their mistake causes her much short-term distress, but it was through him that she met Connie and eventually found what she was looking for.* Midge’s second tryst was with the aptly named Grace Diamond (Marilyn Maxwell), a good-timer who treats fighters like Kleenex. She’s an opportunistic user who meets her match. The idea that Midge could hurt someone so despicable is silly. His final girlfriend is Palmer Harris (Lola Maxwell), the spoiled and slumming wife of the crooked fight promoter. Their affair is brief, and ends when Midge agrees to cut ties in exchange for a bigger percentage of the gate. Undoubtedly a cold-blooded choice, but it bears repeating Midge has no idea how to make himself or anyone else happy, especially not a married woman. Midge is a pig, but he never tries to hide it. All the women in the story are well rid of him, but none suffer lasting harm.


That leaves the brother and the trainer. Connie is supposedly the sympathetic conscience of the film, constantly exasperated with his brother, yet he seems to have forgotten who pays the bills—and, for that matter, who grew up in the orphanage. Hell, Connie even gets the girl; what does he have to grouse about? As for the trainer, Haley is the only guy in the picture who knows the score all along. In quintessential noir fashion, he knows that he’ll be dropped him when the bigger purses come, yet he returns to train Midge for his climactic title fight anyway. As he repeats time and again, “I can’t keep away from it, I like to watch a good boy in action.” The idea of a fighter leaving one trainer for another happens as often on screen as it does in real life, a cliché in both worlds. It’s important to realize that Champion is a noir film in which none of the characters come away clean. Dig this most of all: when Midge finally lands that first big fight with Johnny Dunne, both Connie and Tommy want him to take the dive—they want him to cheat. 

If the movie has a flaw it’s that it doesn’t fully depict the grueling physical realities of the prizefighter’s life. The ring scenes (directed by Stanley Kramer rather than Mark Robson, who Kramer said didn’t know enough about boxing) are exquisite, but the narrative’s preoccupation with fight-fixing doesn’t afford any screen time to the everyday sacrifices made by fighters. Midge stacks knockouts way too fast and scores a title shot in no time at all, while in reality the achievement of a world’s championship, or even a spot on the undercard of a championship bout, was a pipe dream for most pugs. The film does include a Rocky-style training sequence, though nowadays it plays for laffs. 

Douglas is miraculous in his final scene. Bloody and victorious, having returned to his dressing room after ferociously pummeling Dunne, he leers and gesticulates at the camera, his battered face a desperate reflection of his maimed but resilient soul. Midge’s life comes full circle with his defeat of the man who opened the door to a life in the ring—a dichotomous life that offered not only the illusory pleasures of fame, fortune, and women; but more importantly, the respect and legacy he craved. Cinematic convention keeps us expecting that he’ll see the light and turn an improbable Ebenezer Scrooge-like corner at the end, yet he never does. Midge’s refusal to compromise or live on anything but his own terms is a worthy valediction. It imbues his life with a strange and moving integrity. It also makes him an iconic hero of film noir. It’s fitting that he should die after he wins the final fight; he has nothing in the world left to prove. Some men are not meant to suffer old age.

Champion (1949)

Director: Mark Robson.

Cinematographer: Franz Planer
Screenplay: Carl Foreman, based on a story by Ring Lardner.
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Arthur Kennedy, Marilyn Maxwell, Ruth Roman, and Paul Stewart.
Released by: United Artists
Running time: 99 minutes

* (Some viewers/reviewers of Champion suggest that Midge rapes Emma late in the film. For the record, after numerous viewings I still don’t read the code in that way, but I’d certainly change my tune (and, of course, my review) if someone were to convince me. This essay is something of a justification Midge’s bad behavior, but certainly not for rape. 

I WOULDN'T BE IN YOUR SHOES (1948)

It opens, this thing, on death row. A nameless penitentiary squats next to a river that turns over and over, churning like the guts of the suckers wasting away inside its walls. Three hours to go until the lights flicker and the warden once again flips the switch on the vacancy sign. It’s Number Five’s turn tonight, and he’s got no taste for the meal that arrives hot under a silver platter. Number Three puts on a record, hoping to take Number Five’s mind off the ticking of the clock, which echoes so loudly that not even the crashing of the river can drown it out. The other doomed men whisper to him from up and down the block, “Talk boy, tell us how you got here. Talking takes your mind off things when you’re up close to it.” So Number Five hunkers down onto the rack, probably for the last time, and gives. It has to do with a dead man, a wallet full of big bills, and a pair of dancing shoes.

“Where you been?” he remembers asking her.

“Around the world in a rowboat.” She said, her lips barely moving, tired after yet another night on her feet, eyeballing the bed and longing for the numbness of sleep. Give her a few hours and she’ll come back to life, having momentarily forgotten the too-tight heels, the threadbare dress, those same old tired records, and the wretched breath of lonely, clutching men.

It stings to look at her, to think about what she does for the rent. He isn’t pulling his own weight — they live off her sweat and tears. They both used to be real dancers, but that was a lifetime ago. The city was magnificent when the war was on, bright and abundant with six-week contracts, every grinning theatrical man’s door wide open. Not now though. In the months since it ended and the naval yard in Brooklyn began to teem with men again — older now, their eyes different — the nightclub gigs dried up and the city boiled down to this one room apartment and the dark alleys that surround it on all four sides.

He remembers his anger that night, the tangy flavor of it, remembers throwing one new dancing shoe, then the other after the alley cats bleating on the fence outside their window. The shoes were a gift from her, a sign that she still hoped, but to him they were just another reminder of his failure. He shut his eyes thinking he’d either get the shoes back in the morning or he wouldn’t, but when he dragged himself out of bed they were already there, leaning neatly up against the flat’s scarred door. He should’ve figured the shoes’ reappearance was fishy. If he wasn’t such a dumb cluck he would have thrown them in the incinerator.

Maybe he should have gotten wise later that afternoon, when he found the wallet and the money on the street. Third-rate hoofers like him didn’t catch breaks, there was something else at work here. It was if the thing had been put there just for him, where only he would find it. He had pounded this stretch of sidewalk, from one dour theatrical man’s locked door to the next, so often that he could do it through the haze that his life had become. He could have, should have turned it in — he wanted to, really — but she lit up when she saw the bills. She thought of the money as their ticket out, to the coast and maybe a chance in the movies, and what good was a man if he couldn’t give his girl the things she wanted?

But the cops had his number. They had taken a plaster of the footprint at the murder scene — in the alley right outside the apartment window. They knew it was a tap shoe. They knew the damn thing belonged to a man of his size and build. They started watching him and waiting for him to spend the money. It was a Bakelite radio that fouled them up, and not even a good one. Can’t a man buy his wife a radio without being hauled in for murder? Not in this nightmare. Now in a few hours, at midnight, this first Tuesday after Christmas, the lights will flicker and a day or two later some other sap will take his place, and the others will call him Number Five. He’ll have a story of his own to tell, and a river that listens.   

I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948)

Directed by William Nigh

Screenplay by Steve Fisher

Story by Cornell Woolrich

Starring Don Castle, Elyse Knox, Regis Toomey

Cinematography by Mack Stengler

Released by Monogram Pictures (Walter Mirisch Productions)

Running Time: 70 minutes

OVER-EXPOSED (1956)

I haven’t written much about Cleo Moore or Hugo Haas aside from an earlier essay on The Other Woman, in spite of seeing the lion’s share of their respective pictures. I’ve always intended to do some sort of magazine length piece about the director and his peroxide muse, but the moment never seems right. However I had a chance to take a look at Moore’s 1956 film Over-Exposed on the Bad Girls of Film Noir, Volume 2 disc, released by Columbia Classics in 2010. My initial viewing was via a rough bootleg, so the high quality transfer here was a welcome surprise.

This is the rare Cleo Moore outing minus Hugo Haas, and it’s refreshing to see the actress with her name above the title and out from under the big Czech’s pervasive lack of self esteem and his bittered pleas for Hollywood recognition. On the other hand, worn-out Lewis Seiler, who directed Moore the previous year in Women’s Prison (on the same disc as Over-Exposed), is asleep at the wheel. Nobody out there is shouting that this would-be Monroe was a great actress, but surely she wasn’t hopeless — see her sexy splash scene opposite Robert Ryan in Nick Ray’s On Dangerous Ground. Throughout Over-Exposed Moore appears to have only just learned her lines, just a take or two away from getting it right, but Seiler is either too easily satisfied or simply too anxious to get the movie in the can. It makes for a frustrating viewing experience. 

The story here takes a backseat to cheesecake, with many of the scenes contrived to get Moore into a series of cantilevered gowns and swimsuits by legendary Columbia costumer Jean Louis (picture Rita/Gilda singing Put the Blame on Mame). And although the 5' 3" canary blonde was at best a poor man’s bombshell, Moore never looked better than she does in Over-Exposed, and if Marilyn or Lana saw the move there must have been a few moments when even their eyebrows perked up. Spectacular cleavage aside, Moore plays Lily Krenshka, a small town girl who arrives in the Big Apple only to get busted after she landing a job as a hostess in a clip-joint. Lily’s perp walk is flashpopped by Max West, an aging, drunken photographer who somehow manages to convince her to pose for swimsuit photos in his apartment studio. Intrigued by the possibilities of a life on the other side of the camera, Lily stays on with West, tending to his alcoholism and reviving his flagging business, all while learning the ins and outs of the photographer’s life (via a nice montage). Eventually she leaves the nest with a camera of her own and a sexier name — Lila Crane, but finds career opportunities few and far between. Spurned by the legitimate news agencies, she finally lands a position as a barely-clad picture grabber at a Manhattan nightspot. Before long Lila shrewdly develops herself into one of the top portrait and advertising photogs in the city, but will her reckless ambition and her casual willingness to photograph anyone, at any time, doing anything, bring it all crashing down?

Although Over-Exposed is ostensibly a crime film, it’s a stretch to call it a film noir. There’s no doom, dread, or angst, and with the exception of a scene near the end involving pock-marked love interest Richard Crenna, there’s little in the way of visual style. Most of the scenes are flooded with light, giving viewers a never-ending eyeful of a decked-out Moore, in spite of otherwise cheap production values. In trading Haas for Seiler we get to finally see what Moore could do in an unabashed star vehicle, but at the expense of Haas’s weird, and inherently noirish psychological peccadilloes. 

Over-Exposed exploits its star under the façade of a morally upright tale about runaway ambition, but such irony was obvious even in 1956. In the end contemporary viewers will find a film that merely reinforces those same old gendered mid-century stereotypes about “threatening” women who want to work in a man’s world. Faced with desperate circumstances after being arrested as a hostess (prostitute), Moore’s Lily/Lila admirably manages to lift herself out of a deplorable situation through a legitimate professional career. And although the script paints her as a careerist who eschews morality and a place in the kitchen for money and glamour, contemporary audiences will find little fault with her actions. After all, is it fair that Lila lives in a world where the quality of her photographs seems not to matter?

Over-Exposed (1956)

Directed by Lewis Seiler

Produced by Lewis J. Rachmil

Screenplay by James Gunn and Gil Orlovitz

Story by Richard Sale and Mary Loos

Cinematography by Henry Freulich

Starring Cleo Moore and Richard Crenna

Released by Columbia Pictures

Running time: 80 minutes

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (1950)

“One false move and you’re in over your head”

I tend to steer clear of prestige noir — there just isn’t much new to say about such films, and more often than not they wrap up in too neat a package. But in revisiting Where the Sidewalk Ends after a two-decade hiatus, I discovered a far better picture than I remembered — surprisingly post-modern in its depiction of a murky gray world where it’s difficult to tell right from wrong, with characters neither entirely good nor entirely bad, for whom just getting by is all that can be rightfully hoped for. In Dana Andrews’s detective Mark Dixon I found a man wracked by the human imperfections that compel us to watch film noir, deeply flawed yet nurturing a private hope that somewhere, somehow, in some unexplored place out beyond the neon signs and the never-ending warren of streets, there might be a chance at grace, at a better kind of life. Through the course of the film, Dixon comes to finally understand what such a chance demands of a man, and he gives it.

Any way you look at it, Where the Sidewalk Ends is a plum of a movie. Released by Fox in that most noirish of years, 1950, it reteams director Otto Preminger with stars Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, the key players from the 1944 hit Laura. And while a comparison of the two films would make for a meaty essay in its own right, here I’ll just note that while Laura, with it’s shakier claim at noir status, is concerned with human weakness in the New York glamour set, Where the Sidewalk Ends presents a more frightening — and far more exhilarating — version of the big city. The tall buildings, bright lights, and chic glamour of Laura are present, but seem forever lost in the distance, seen only through grimy windows, over dilapidated fences, and through the fog of a city beginning to devour itself. 

The world Preminger depicts here is bleak and gritty, strewn with trash, where predators lurk around the next street corner, and hopelessness blights each back alley. It’s a night-world, as different from the previous Preminger-Andrews project Fallen Angel as it is from Laura. Look in the window of a cheap basement flat and you’ll find Mrs. Tribaum, sleeping the years away at her kitchen table, longing for death to remember her address. Hail a taxi and you’ll meet Jiggs Taylor, who dreams that his fares are dignitaries to be shuttled from one party to the next, so beaten down by a dreary existence that he has trouble separating reality from fantasy, and worships the cop who once used his cab to chase down a petty thief. That clean-cut guy with the dice? That’s Kenneth Paine, an ex-war hero who took off his uniform only to discover that there weren’t any jobs after all, no matter what they said in the Stars and Stripes. Now he’s a degenerate gambler who drinks and smacks his wife.

And then there’s the cop. Where the Sidewalk Ends serves up one of film noir’s most finely drawn anti-heroes. Dana Andrews is hard-boiled detective Mark Dixon, enigmatic poster boy for loneliness and alienation. Like many other noir protagonists, Dixon can’t escape his past. He is further complicated by the fact that he isn’t responsible for his past, though he’s borne the burden of it since childhood. The blame lies instead with his father, a lifelong felon gunned down while attempting to blast his way out of Sing Sing. Now, neither the crooks he encounters nor his fellow officers will let him forget that he’s “Sandy Dixon’s son.” And it holds true that, as life often reminds us, the abused eventually become abusers. Empowered by a badge, the relentlessly beaten little boy is now a frayed insomniac obsessed with strong-arming criminals, unhinged by his desire to revenge himself on his long-dead father. Dixon craves violence, and even begs his boss for permission to beat a confession out of a suspect. The film’s opening finds Dixon getting dressed down for yet another string of brutality complaints. If he can’t reign in his temper, he’ll be fired; for now he’s forced to accept a demotion. And to make things worse, he’s saddled with a new straight-arrow precinct commander, Lieutenant Thomas (Karl Malden). On this night however, fate is only beginning to vex Dixon, whose life is about to spin out of control.

Ben Hecht’s masterful screenplay uses a one-two punch of critical early scenes from which uncoil all of the film’s drama. The first takes place in a swanky midtown hotel room, where Mr. Morrison, an out of town craps player, is murdered after taking Scalise (Gary Merrill, superb), a gangster with whom Dixon has a long history, for nineteen grand. Morrison was lured to the hotel by ex-soldier Paine, who used his pretty wife Morgan (Gene Tierney) as bait. When she refuses to continue the scheme by convincing Morrison to keep playing, Paine smacks her. Morrison intercedes, but Paine Kos him and flees, leaving the unconscious gambler with Scalise and his crew — and they want their nineteen large back.

So it’s no surprise that when the scene jumps to Dixon and his partner, cruising through Times Square, the radio dispatcher sends them to the hotel on a murder beef — Morrison is dead, knifed through the heart. Scalise, who clearly did (or ordered) the killing after Paine left, denies that Morrison won money in the game and wanted to leave, and contends instead that Paine murdered him in a jealous fight over Morgan. Dixon doesn’t buy it, but Lt. Thomas chalks the detective’s skepticism up to the torch he’s been carrying for Scalise and tells him to locate Paine, which brings us to the second scene. Dixon enters Paine’s cheap flat and discovers him attempting to phone Morrison — he wants his cut of the winnings — which refutes Scalise’s version of events and makes him for the real killer. But when Dixon tries to clear things up by taking Paine in, the drunk comes at him with a bottle. One well-placed uppercut later and Paine drops like a sack of potatoes, somehow dead from the blow. We find out later that he had a “silver plate in his head,” which explains how a bump on the noggin could kill him. The critical moment in the picture comes when Dixon squats down and realizes that he has accidentally killed Paine — albeit in self-defense. Preminger exploits the moment by lingering on Andrews’s terrified face. Rather than coming clean with the brass, Dixon stages an elaborate ruse to cast suspicion on Scalise. He tosses the room and throws Paine’s body in the river. He later offers a reason for his panicked response: “I covered it up … I couldn’t shake loose from what I was.”

In the immediate aftermath of the events at Paine’s flop, things seem to go well for Dixon, who develops a fast friendship with the newly-widowed Morgan, and begins to be teased by the possibility (as per Laura) of a life different than the one in which he’s been mired. (Yet Preminger’s ever-present moral ambiguity forces us to ponder whether it’s the relationship with the girl that saves the cop from the darkness, or if she isn’t some sort of ostensible femme fatale, and that because of her Dixon chooses to destroy himself.) It isn’t until Lt. Thomas directs his suspicion at Jiggs, Morgan’s taxi-driving father, that Dixon’s guilt begins to consume him. He eventually sees just one path out of his dilemma, that will exonerate Morgan’s father and bring Scalise to some sort of justice. The film’s final act sees Dixon’s confront his own demons and make his play for redemption. The denouement is far better than most viewers have given it credit for. It’s unexpected and subtle, a two-sided coin as rife with ambiguity as it is with possibility.

This is Dana Andrews’s film from start to finish, and Where the Sidewalk Ends rises and falls on his casting, which isn’t surprising given that he was a Fox contract star and had a both proven track record with Preminger as well as great chemistry with Tierney. Personally I love the guy, and the actor’s struggles away from the screen (Andrews alcoholism was at its peak at the time of production) certainly lend gravitas to his performance. Yet one wonders what sort of film this would have been if perhaps one of Hollywood’s more renowned tough guys — Hayden, Ryan, McGraw — could have been given the role. Certainly male-female chemistry is a significant aspect of the film, and Andrews was inarguably a more well-rounded leading man than those three, but Preminger asks his audience to accept Dixon’s toughness on his say-so, rather than establishing his brutality as, for example, Nicholas Ray does with Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground. Neither does Preminger do himself any favors in this regard by casting Neville Brand as a thug. An important physical scene calls for Andrews and Brand to mix it up, which plays like a fight between a hardened criminal and a bank teller. A closer look at the sequence, set in a Turkish bath, reveals a missed opportunity — one that if capitalized upon may have enhanced this film’s reputation as a noir. Rather than have the men fight amidst a backdrop of roiling steam, partially obscured by clouds of vapor, they trade fists in the massage room under the clarity of the hot lights. Compared to similar moments in other crime films, the fight seems clumsy and staged — and Brand, as he did in so many of his films, simply overwhelms the leading man.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is beautifully filmed, entertaining, and disturbing. The opening credits alone are worth the price of admission. What follows is special: an archetypal film noir that, although plot driven, manages to develop strong characters who undermine the pervasively upbeat notions of postwar American society. Dana Andrews’s existentially troubled cop thoroughly belies the image of a stable and detached police officer, while the relationship of Kenneth and Morgan Paine obliterates the popular idea of a happy postwar marriage, one characterized in the advertisements and television of the day by employment, picket fences, and most importantly, love. Its criminals are intelligent schemers who move effortlessly alongside more polite society and clearly don’t fear the forces of order. The movie’s noir statement is indelible.

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

Directed by Otto Preminger

Screenplay by Ben Hecht

Based on a novel by William L. Stuart

Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle

Starring Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, and Gary Merrill

Released by 20^th Century Fox

Running time: 90 minutes