The Undercover Man

According to Eddie Muller, the reliable host of TCM's "Noir Alley," director Joseph H. Lewis lost control of the final cut of "The Undercover Man" to producer Robert Rossen. That would explain why the movie is so visually interesting (Burnett Guffey was the DP), with a lot of moody and evocative scenes, and characters often dwarfed by their surroundings, suggesting powerlessness. Unfortunately, the footage was tortured into a sort of G-man procedural with the action interrupted by gratuitous static images, e.g., pointless close-ups of subpoenas.

As agent Frank Warren (a pseudonym for Frank J. Wilson, who busted Al Capone), Glenn Ford exercises his considerable range, from a loving husband (of Nina Foch) to a determined treasury agent whose negotiations with a Mob lawyer (Barry Kelley) and accountant (Leo Penn) and various thugs and a variety of witnesses often goes seriously awry. All the roles are well cast for reality. The only glamour-puss is Patricia Barry as Leo Penn's wife, with honorable mention to young Kay Medford as a chorus girl. More ordinary are the faces of the three Italian women-- the mother, wife, and daughter of Mob accountant Sal Rocco (Anthony Caruso)-- who become key not just to the plot but to the whole point of the film.

Certain scenes are so well done they become indelible, including a frantic foot-chase down a busy street with two gunmen pursuing Rocco whose young daughter Rosie (Joan Lazer) is running after them and will witness what happens.

In a riveting montage, while Warren is on a train to see his wife, images of people he's threatened and been threatened by appear sequentially in half of the frame, embodying his tormented thoughts and repeating their threats ("How's your wife?") above the clamor of the rocketing train wheels which crescendo toward madness. He arrives at the depot in "Tower City, The Dairyland of America" (Wisconsin? I took it as an amusingly oblique reference to Capone in nearby Chicago) where his wife meets him. They're soon cuddling under a tree in a bucolic landscape, where Warren hopes to buy a farm. According to Muller again, the intimacy of the scene was created by using three cameras so that Ford and Foch didn't have to repeat their actions for fresh angles; in fact, the rehearsal footage was used.

But the best scene is wisely contrary to movies that glamorize the Mob. The elderly Mrs. Rocco (Italian-born Esther Minciotti) explains to Warren why she will continue to help in spite of the danger. Speaking Italian with young Rosie translating, she says she left Italy with her son Sal after her husband and another son were killed by "the Mafia, the Black Hand" because they refused to pay protection money. She regrets that she didn't "stay and fight," so now, in America, she will.

Whatever Rossen did to undermine Joseph Lewis's work, at least he didn't give us a sanitized Mob.

Before bedecking the noir cycle with two of its gems - Gun Crazy and The Big Combo - Joseph H. Lewis exercised his talents on The Undercover Man. Scant surprise that it falls short of those two movies, the first of which boasted Peggy Cummins as Annie Laurie Starr and the second John Alton as director of photography. While the dependably gifted Burnett Guffey pinch-hits for Alton, the absence of any major female role makes a Cummins unnecessary (though still missed). So there's no countervailing axis to balance out the star, Glenn Ford.

While Ford contributed yeoman's work in some indispensable titles, from Gilda to The Big Heat and Human Desire, he always stood at odds to the sardonic cool that was the hallmark of male leads in the cycle. In picture after picture, he unpacked the same old angst and wore it like a hair shirt. When his reasons were up there on the screen - a torch for Rita Hayworth, a blood-lust for revenge - he brought an uncommon intensity to roles that a flippant approach would have watered down.

But in The Undercover Man he turns a glorified civil-service job into the stuff of agony. He's an undercover government agent; his worn-down wife, Nina Foch, joins him occasionally on his assignments but for the most part stays at home near Washington, D.C. where she's come to accept his extended absences with a long face. Ford and his partner James Whitmore find their frequently flipped Treasury credentials carry little weight in big-shouldered Chicago, where the syndicate's ruthlessness strikes witnesses blind and dumb even when victims are gunned down in broad daylight. And the mob's lavishly remunerated mouthpiece, Barry Kelley, impudently taunts Ford for his futile crusade against the never seen Big Fellow (as he's affectionately known around town). But in the dogged tradition of the Feds in movies like The House on 92nd Street and T-Men, Ford keeps slogging away until he finds a chink in the silent armor....

The Undercover Man starts out in the detail-cluttered, reverential way of so many of these para-patriotic films, but about halfway through Lewis finds his stride and eschews hagiography for moviemaking. A tense and violent sequence among the street stalls of Chicago's Italian neighborhood, where a turncoat gangster is chased and killed in front of his little daughter, delivers a welcome jolt after all the handwriting experts and accountants' ledgers. But the movie always slinks back to Ford, suffering valiantly - he's such an irresistible target it's no wonder Kelley can't help needling him. And it's Kelley's sly, smug performance that lends The Undercover Man the subversive grit that, in the absence of Cummins (or any of her sisters), it sorely needs.

"In the cracking of many big criminal cases such as those of John Dillinger, Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, among others-the newspaper headlines tell only of the glamorous and sensational figures involved. But behind the headlines are the untold stories of ordinary men and women acting with extraordinary courage. This picture concerns one of those men"

The Undercover Man is produced by the director of All The King's Men and The Hustler (Robert Rossen), directed by Joseph H. Lewis (The Big Combo), photographed by the guy who did Bonnie And Clyde and From Here To Eternity (Burnett Guffey) and stars Glenn Ford (Gilda and The Big Heat). I don't think it's over exaggerating things to say that this particular film has pretty high credentials. But is it any good? Well yes and no is the cop out answer really. A lot will depend on your tolerance for a crime (Noir) story without the edginess and shades of dark colours so befitting the genres Undercover Man purports to belong to.

Joseph Lewis' film is a good old honest tale of genuine people, each threatened or blighted by crime, collectively coming together to thwart the mob types that ran amok back in the day. Led by the seemingly unflinching Treasury Department operative Frank Warren (Ford), we are led thru a talky movie that ultimately is relying on its "who's cooking the books, and can we prove it" plot to keep all interested. Yes a couple of potent crime scenes are in the piece to ensure we know that there are villains in our midst, but really this is a sedate sort of crime picture and prospective new viewers should be prepared for that.

Technically it's fine, all involved are delivering a high standard that their respective back catalogue's suggests that they should. Other cast members range from the underused (James Whitmore) to the under written (Nina Foch), with the latter a hindrance to the film because a strong female presence would have put meat on the bones of Warren's state of mind skeleton. Shyster lawyer duties falls to Barry Kelley (The Asphalt Jungle), who does rather well to be the central focus of the badness within the picture, but he is not the main man, he is not the villain at the stories heart-and with that you can't help hankering for a real touch of villainy to really darken proceedings.

Recommended for sure, but only as an interesting crime story featuring pretty interesting characters. For it's neither dark or grim enough to be considered anything else. 7/10

I'm not sure why this film was entitled The Undercover Man since it did not involve any law enforcement infiltrating organized crime to bring a case against some criminals. Maybe it was the sardonic humor of producer Robert Rossen and director Joseph H. Lewis since it does involve Treasury agents Glenn Ford, James Whitmore, and David Wolfe operating out of a rather dingy apartment going over syndicate books to make an income tax case against, 'the Big Fellow'.

After the success they had with taking Al Capone down this way, going after the finances of criminal enterprises has been a tried and true way to go in these matters for law enforcement.

The agents are a good if colorless lot, the real spice in The Undercover Man are some of the various character roles cast by Rossen and Lewis. Barry Kelley is the syndicate lawyer, a very confident fellow right up to the end, he's one you'll remember. Also Anthony Caruso and his family, mother Esther Minciotti, wife Angela Clarke and daughter Joan Lazer. He keeps the tallies for one the syndicate's numbers parlors, but he's tasted the high life and now has a mistress as well in stripper Kay Medford, her first credited screen role. He's memorable too as the luckless Caruso is gunned down in the street.

Another syndicate bookkeeper is Leo Penn and his wife Patricia Barry who flees after Caruso is killed. You'll know Leo because of his famous two time Oscar winning son Sean. The family resemblance is unmistakable.

The good guys are kept colorless until almost the end. They patiently billed their case with numbers and handwriting experts who tell them where to look for clues and suspects. In the end however Glenn Ford does have to resort to the gun to get out of a tight spot.

Ford's allowed a little personal life and a bit of family crisis when he thinks he could be putting wife Nina Foch in harm's way. It's a bit of a diversion showing these guys are as human as some of the people they're dealing with.

But The Undercover Man is best when concentrating on the bad and the luckless. Pay particular attention to Caruso, Kelley, and Medford. It's a good if somewhat unknown noir classic.

Treasury Department agent Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) is looking to take down notorious mob leader Big Fellow.

It's a straight forward crime noir based on the Al Capone investigation and trial. I started off thinking that Ford is playing against type as a villain. That would have been a fun curveball but it quickly reveals itself. As a take on the Capone case, this has many similarities to other such crime dramas. It's generally fine to good although I don't like the little vacation with the wife. It's like the movie takes a vacation from itself. I get the emotional punch it's supposed to pack but it could have done that and more by threatening the wife directly. The tone is off during that section. This has some good parts but it doesn't always hit hard enough. The jury bit is great but of course, that gets done a lot. It would be nice for the danger to feel more intense. I never get the sense that Glenn Ford is ever in fear except for the wife threat.