The Undercover Man

Director Joseph H. Lewis brings his trademark stylishness to what is, ostensibly, a straightforward crime drama. Glenn Ford plays Warren, a Treasury Department agent who uses his knowledge of book-keeping to take a novel approach to take down the mob.

Assisted by Pappas (James Whitmore; in his film debut) and Wolfe (James Weinberg) and supported by supportive but strong wife (Nina Foch), Warren has to weave his way, methodically, to his ultimate prize - "The Big Fellow" (think Al Capone). Of course, the road to The Big Fellow is paved through low life street thugs (including Anthony Caruso as Rocco) and O'Rourke (Barry Kelley) - the crooked lawyer for "The Syndicate." O'Rourke relishes be able to rub his ill-gotten wealth in the lawman's face.

What lifts UNDERCOVER MAN is Lewis' street level view of New York City. You can practically taste the melting pot as Burnett Guffey's camera prowls through the crowded streets and into the shadowy corridors of the tenements they live in. George Duning's stark score adds to the tension. The acting is fine throughout, even if some of the ethnic touches in the screenplay get laid on a bit thick. We only hear the word 'Mafia' uttered in relation to original Sicilian roots. Here, it's always just the amorphous "Syndicate".

UNDERCOVER MAN is a B crime picture with some Noirish elements, but, it's a strong example of what good filmmaking and acting can do to take it up a notch.

"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

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.

Glenn Ford gives a believable performance in this fast paced film with an all too short role for the underrated Nina Foch. Great direction from Joseph H. Lewis.

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.