Guilty Bystander

Director Joseph Lerner does not have much of a track record: his two best known works are GUILTY BYSTANDER and C -MAN, and neither is memorable.

Zachary Scott was a handsome actor with the bad luck of landing roles reflecting ugly souls. Even when he is not an out and out weasel, as in MILDRED PIERCE, he still cannot rise above being the dipsomaniac that he is in GUILTY BYSTANDER. His acting is competent, as ever, he is just plain dislikable, not least because he keeps surrendering so easily to the bottle even after finding out that his very young son was abducted.

Pretty Faye Emerson, who played opposite Scott in other films, does not make much sense. She wants to find her little boy, enlists ex-hubby Scott's help, but then seems do nothing, basically just prettifying the screen. I was more impressed with the small parts of J Bromberg as the high blood pressure Varkas who slaps Scott; Mary Boland, as the landlord who keeps encouraging Scott to drink; and, above all, Jed Prouty as the malevolent Dr Elder, who knows more than he lets on.

Photography is good for a B noir. Script suffers from poor cause and effect, the son's disappearance failing to get to the former cop Scott as focused as any father would be, and the motivation for a serious felony like the abduction of a child, is never properly explained.

Not bad, but far from good.

This is a film about alcoholism. And, Zachary Taylor, playing an alcoholic, ex-cop, who has abandoned his family, plays the role very well.

Taylor's Max Thursday is told by his ex-wife that their son and her brother are missing. Thursday wants no help from the cops who he feels will take an apathetic approach to a case of a missing child and its uncle.

Along the way, Thursday, formerly a top cop, battles the bottle more than the untrustworthy, criminally-inclined, underworld figures he meets. One such figure is fellow alcoholic Angel, played brilliantly by Kay Medford. Angel almost steals the film, but is unfortunately quickly tossed aside (literally and figuratively) by the filmmakers.

Faye Emerson came out of retirement to act alongside Taylor. The two made the fabulous noir Danger Signal together five years earlier. She's excellent as the woman trying to find her son (and brother), and forced to rely on her disease-ridden ex-husband, who, by the way, she still loves. (She never declares it, but Emerson's acting, while nuanced, delivers the message.)

Mary Boland deserves mention here, too. The flop house proprietor has given Thursday room and board to be her "house dick."

Too bad, the film doesn't give much for the great Sam Levene to do. He played the police captain who's is noticeably absent after the first act. In fact, there's a couple of scenes where you expect his presence, but he's not there. I suspect the nickels and pennies budget created blemishes like this.

TCM is screening a pristine restored version of the film. Cinematographer Russell Harlan, ASC (Gerald Hirschfeld is also credited) does a super job of lighting gritty, real locations including interiors of abandoned tenements and New York's subway system.

Director Joseph Lerner botches the third act with help from screenwriter Don Ettlinger. But, I commend them for their success at guerrilla filmmaking as TCM's Eddie Muller points out the production could not afford any permits to shoot in the city's streets so the filmmakers did it without.

Overall, the film's fails to meet expectations, but is a gem for genre fans.

'Guilty Bystander' is the sort of film that appeals a lot to me, being someone who has loved the genre it fits under for a long time (drama/thriller with a noir-ish edge) and who really liked the idea. Not a novel idea, but it had real potential to be intriguing and suspenseful with the right execution. Have liked Zachary Scott in other roles, and was interested in seeing him in the anti-hero sort of role rather than the cads and villains he usually played and as a lead rather than support.

While not a bad film and its good things are great, 'Guilty Bystander' doesn't really live up to its potential and could have improved significantly in many major areas. It is a good representation of Scott, was surprised actually at how much so and has a couple of good set pieces. But 'Guilty Bystander' should have been a lot more compelling, tauter and suspenseful than it turned out, and the wildly inconsistent storytelling (which about three of the flaws fit under) is where it most falls down.

There are good things here. Scott is very good here, subdued but also suitably hard boiled and with the right amount of intensity and edge needed for an anti-hero sort of character. The rest of the cast are also fine, if not quite on his level. Even though low budget, the film looks good. Especially in the suitably moody and quite stylish photography and the lighting has effective use of darkness and shadows.

Furthermore, there are a couple of effective scenes, most notably the subway and staircase ones that are particularly well shot and where the most tension and intrigue comes from.

A lot could have been done better on the other hand. The story manages to be both flimsy and convoluted, a story that tries to have too many plot elements and strands and does far too little with all of them so there is no substance. We never get to know the characters either, they are very sketchy and there are too many. The film is also far too talky, and quite a lot of it is extraneous and could easily have been trimmed.

Despite liking Dmitri Tiomkin's music usually, for me his score here is overwrought and more suited to melodrama (one of the few scores of his where it felt like he had scored for the wrong film or didn't know what it was). The ending is another one of all the films seen recently that is too mawkish and too much like it belonged in another film. The direction is pretty routine and uninspired, apart from occasional flashes of greatness.

Concluding, underwhelming but watchable. See it for Scott. 5/10.

Everything is in it: the dark shades, the twists in the plot and the troubles policeman and some ravishing ladies. Totally restored in 2019. A long story, but some gripping scenes in the end.

Zachary Scott is an ex-cop with a bad case of alcoholism. He's a house detective at a sleazy hotel, sleeping one off, when his ex-wife, Faye Emerson wakes him to tell him their son has been kidnapped, his ex-colleagues are sympathetic, but it's up to Scott to track the abductors through the Skid Row world and rescue his son.... and himself.

This movie benefits from a strong, sympathetic story, and location shooting on the low-rent streets of downtown New York. There's a lot of talking, though, for such a usually visual genre, and the performances, while appropriate, are not terribly interesting. Scott and Miss Emerson start out with low-affect performances. Miss Emerson mumbles her lines in a tired and hopeless manner, and Scott spends the first half with subdued reactions. It's how a lot of depressives act, but it's not terribly interesting to watch.

The cast is eked out with some good performers, Mary Boland plays the sort of down-on-heels ex-floozie that Esther Howard usually did for Paramount Noirs, Sam Levene is the police captain who can't help because of the rule book, and J. Edward Bromberg, Kay Medford, and Jed Prouty have memorable roles. The result is a film noir that is highly watchable.