Ohne Skrupel

Howard Duff wants a job as a photographer on Bruce Bennett's newspaper. But you can't get a job without experience, and he can't get experience without a job. But he convinces assistant editor Peggy Dow with a great shot he got 'while passing by'. Soon he's stealing assignments and gets crooked businessman Brian Donleavy to pose for him. Soon, he's doing dirty work for Donleavy because he craves money, and Donleavy's wife, Anne Vernon.... as well as Miss Dow. He's also got gangster Laurence Tierney paying him off, as he rises rapidly. It doesn't look there's an stopping him.

Joseph Pevney's first movie as director is a bleak morality play about what happens to someone with ability but no moral compass; casting Donleavy and Tierney, two actors who made their bones with such roles, makes his inevitable end seem more inevitable, and that easy casting is, perhaps, an artistic error, but it works well enough here. Duff shows himself as capable in the role, which reminds me of Jake Gyllenhaal in NIGHTCRAWLER. Keep an eye for Chester Conklin and Rock Hudson in bit parts.