Main Street After Dark

Main Street After Dark (1945)

** (out of 4)

Edward L. Cahn directed this drama about a family a pickpockets who prey on sailors at a local bar. Cahn directed several of the "Crime Does Not Pay" entries for MGM and I'm going to guess this 57-minute film was meant to be an extended version of that. Sadly there isn't too much going in this film and comes off rather dull in the end. The storyline never really takes off even though there's an impressive cast including Edward Arnold, Selena Royle, Audrey Totter and Hume Cronyn.

This one shows up on Turner Classic Movies ever couple of years.

This film belongs to the first part of Edward L Cahn's career, before he drowned in grade B and even Z movies industry. This light hearted crime film made for MGM is not uninteresting for gem diggers as I am. This is a feature destined to the whole family for matinee theaters. It is short but not as sharp and brutal as a Warner Bros pictures of the same period, because this is not Ma Barker and her sons gang, another crime family scheme. And I found very amusing a scene of the whole criminal family, sitting in the living room and listening on the radio, not a song nor the news but guess what, the police messages thtru a scanner.....very unusual...

This film is about a family of scum and a cop, Lt. Lorrgan (Edward Arnold) who knows that they are scum and hopes to catch them! It seems that the Dibson family would rather make money picking pockets and rolling drunks instead of working and one of the sons, Lucky, is coming home from prison. He's learned nothing from his incarceration and plans on going right back to his crooked ways....just like his mother, brother, sister and Lucky's wife.

Up until the end, I fully intended to give this one a 7...or possibly and 8. MGM Made an awfully good B-movie...that is, up until the end. Just a few minutes from the end of the film, the Lieutenant goes to the Dibson family home to look for the sons. However, Ma doesn't want him arresting her sons, so she pulls a gun on the cop. He's able to get it away from her and only a minute or so later, the sons arrive. Now, remember, Ma just threatened to kill the cop with a gun...and no one is paying attention to her and she, once again, grabs a gun!! Now, no cop could be THAT stupid...and Arnold's character didn't seem dumb at all up until then. I think the director just wanted to wrap the film up and keep it B-movie length....and Bs were supposed to be inexpensive...so they just filmed this contrived portion instead of coming up with some better ending!

It's a typical wartime home: service star in the window, family sitting quietly in the living room. The door bell rings. It's a a telegram. There's tension. Tom Trout is coming home! They discuss what food there'll be and argue over who gets to cook it. After all, it's not everyday that Tom gets out of prison!

Selena Royle is the mother of the brood, with Dan Duryea as the other son; Audrey Trotter (in her screen debut) is Trotter's wife, and there's little Dorothy Morris to round out the clan. Police lieutenant Edward Arnold never seems far away, urging Trotter to keep out of trouble, mentioning that the farms are short-handed Mostly, though, this movie is hanging around, waiting for the boys to do something dangerous and get collared. With less than an hour to do it in, it doesn't take long.

A great opening scene and Arnold playing one of his chuckling characters keeps this one good. Otherwise, it looks like an expanded entry in the Crime Does Not Pay series.

Too bad that more work and fine tuning wasn't put into this film. What you get is a mildly entertaining programmer about a family of pickpockets harassed by a police lieutenant who could be held partly responsible for the murder that takes place during a robbery. Even the title is misleading. with a title like "Main street After Dark," one would expect to see either a film noir or a "Naked City" type docudrama. Instead we get a "Crime Does Not Pay" type package that plays too much like a stage presentation, especially for the first thirty minutes. That's not to take away from an intriguing story, acted out by a stellar cast. One of the reviewers for IMDb mixes up the family, although the review itself is excellent. The family consists of ma, one daughter, and two sons. Lefty is one of the sons. He is married to Jessie Belle.