Review by Dennis D. McDonald
Revered as a classic in the “film noir” category, this 1948 police procedural still packs a punch despite its toned-down violence and sexual innuendo.
Street scenes of 1948 New York CIty are integrated with a traditionally-structure police-procedural as we follow a murder investigation. A beautiful young woman is found drowned in a bathtub. As the investigation unfolds we get a documentary-style view of the gritty and tedious work involved in plainclothes detective work. As characters are introduced and questioned we find they are frequently not what they initially seem. Lies surface and trip up the liars.
The cops are dogged in their pursuit of the truth, even if it does involve tedious follow ups to the smallest details. Barry Fitzgerald’s homicide detective manages the investigation. He oozes wisdom. He’s seen everything in his career. He also knows when to let his team loose to follow even the wildest of clues.
Interspersed with the unfolding tale we are gifted with a series of character vignettes, some quite touching, some silly, some quirky. One scene, where out of town parents identify their dead daughter in a morgue, are heartbreaking. Other scenes are just ordinary and portray city life up close. We see the inside of a circa-1948 corner convenience store as street life passes outside. We see the inside of a beauty parlor. We see kids playing in the street with water spraying from an open hydrant.
The producer and director make extremely good use of street level black and white photography both in the day to day stuff and in the finale, a humdinger of a chase along an elevated train that ends up high on the WIlliamsburg Bridge.
I had not yet been born when this film was released but the day to day scenes on display here—the clothes, the apartments, the cars on the street—remind me of the albums of black and white photographs my mom kept of family life in those days.
I recommend this excellent film to anyone interested in a variety of genres including police procedurals, film noir crime, or just plain “slice of life” views of a big city in the 1940s.
An interesting question to ponder: were this film remade today, would it be significanly improved with color and more graphic sex, violence, and blood?
Review copyright (c) 2024 by Dennis D. McDonald
