The Undercover Man

I'm wondering if there could be anything more boring than an IRS agent. In "The Undercover Man" from 1949, Glenn Ford plays an IRS agent (I doubt any of them are that good-looking) on a case with his cronies, one played by James Whitmore in his film debut. The film is directed by Joseph Lewis, who directed some very impressive noirs. This film has noirish elements.

Ford is Frank Warren, who is on the trail of someone called "The Big Fellow" as he attempts to get him on a tax evasion charge. If you haven't guessed, this is based on the Al Capone story. The agents walk around the Italian area of Chicago looking for someone who will talk. However, everyone the agents approach to testify or give evidence ends up dead.

These films tend to be pretty dry. This one is enlivened somewhat by Nina Foch as Warren's long-suffering wife, who has had to get used to her husband being away for long periods of time, and by some good scenes. One of the bookkeepers for the Big Fellow, Salvatore Rocco, played by Anthony Caruso, is gunned down in front of his daughter (Joan Lazar). When Warren goes to his funeral, he is called a murderer. Warren is tempted to give up and retire, but it's Rocco's mother who convinces him to keep fighting.

Barry Kelley plays the syndicate lawyer, who is sure no one can touch his client. A total slimeball, he does an excellent job in the role. Ford is right for an IRS agent - serious with no sense of humor.

There is another little guy in the mob that the IRS agents want, but he and his wife take off. The roles are played by Leo Penn and Patricia Barry. Barry I only recognized by voice. And even if you didn't know anything about Leo Penn, you'd know he was Sean's father just by looking at him.

I'm surprised this noirish crime drama hasn't generated more than 3 reviews. It's not top- notch Joseph Lewis, but it is a good, solid film with several outstanding features. IRS agent Glenn Ford wants to get the goods on crime honcho "The Big Fellow". But to do that he has to get a numbers-cruncher on the inside to talk. Trouble is, candidates keep turning up dead, while wife Nina Foch never sees her man. Understandably, Ford wants to quit for a 9 to 5 job, but will he.

One reason these govn't agent films of the late 40's remain interesting is because of artistic conflict. Big money studios want to extol law enforcement while writers and directors like Lewis and Anthony Mann are drawn to the dark side. Thus, the results often raise more questions than they answer, and remain a real contrast to the Dragnet-type paradigm that emerges in the Cold War 1950's. Note, for example, the dramatic highlight of gunmen chasing down a stoolie on a crowded city street. They have to push their way through the sweaty throngs, yet no one stops to intervene, show any curiosity, call a cop or do anything. No, passers-by just go about their business, letting criminality take its course. Why get involved and risk retaliation from an outfit that the community does business with anyway, especially when they play the numbers or handicap horse races. After all, this is a poor neighborhood and gambling, legal or otherwise, holds the prospect of quick riches. So why get involved.

Of course, the episode might be considered nothing more than an effective contrivance. But in its setting, I think it's more than a contrivance and raises interesting questions about the law and community attitudes. Also, consider the aging desk sergeant (a superbly appropriate John Hamilton). He's on the take because he's got a wife and kids to support, not like the bachelor inspector who "can afford to be upright and honest". Now, whatever the opinion of police unions, an underpaid cop is more vulnerable than one that has some organized leverage over pay-grades. I'm not saying this is a social conscience movie. It's not. I am saying that these noirish crime dramas often contained touchy issues that the old studio- system, especially, had difficulty dealing with.

As an IRS agent, Ford is appropriately professional and humorless; at the same time, I'm wondering where I can sign up for the Nina Foch fan club. No wonder Ford wants more time at home. What she lacks in curves, she makes up for in sheer beauty and I'm definitely smitten. But it's that human oil slick in a thousand dollar suit that steals the movie. As master fixer Edward J. O'Rourke, pudgy Barry Kelley is simply superb. He's so effectively oily, we ought to start pumping right now. Also in a standout role is the little girl Rosa (Joan Lazer), unfortunately her only movie credit. Anyway, it's a fairly fast-paced film, with a good, tense ending, and a suitably ironical last line. My only complaint is "The Big Fellow"— why such a awkwardly silly description when any old fictional name should do. Nonetheless, the movie remains, all in all, a credit to the Lewis canon.

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.

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.

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.