Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 30-August-09
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Street With No Name (1948)

Cops and robbers dominate entertainment today, but no era produced such taut, classy crime dramas as the 1940s. Good and bad men looked more cool and sinister, respectively, in suits and fedoras. They talked a patois that now sounds sophisticated in its bluntness. Criminals bought their dames diamonds instead of drugs. And black-and-white cinematography struck images of beauty from the alleys and corridors where they plied their trade.

The Street With No Name is one of the best examples of the genre I have seen. It pulls from FBI case files at a time when J. Edgar Hoover proclaimed "gangsterism" a growing threat to American life. After a couple of robberies in Central City leave two people dead, the bureau selects a special agent (Mark Stevens) to pose as a drifter named George Manly and identify the group responsible. The taciturn and truly manly Stevens makes a fine tough-guy hero and a good foil for Richard Widmark as his nemesis, Alec Stiles. Stiles owns the boxing gym where Manly goes to draw the attention of the city's underbelly and its top dog. Succeeding, he finds himself arrested in a hazing ritual orchestrated by Stiles. The movie pauses at moments like this to explain how the machine of law enforcement works. We see serious men studying fingerprints, conducting ballistic tests, planting false leads to support their undercover operations, and running down data on punch cards.

Having passed the test of worthiness, Manly is welcomed into the group of hoods surrounding Stiles and sets out to prove that he is behind the murders. Despite being an inveterate bastard, Stiles is interesting in that his air of cleverness and superiority appears to have some foundation, which may be due to Widmark's interpretation of the role. While his right-hand man (Donald Buka) suspects Manly early on, Stiles does not have doubts until he learns from a policeman on his payroll that the FBI was tipped off to his latest scheme. Another "inside scoop" moment shows Manly delivering this tipoff to his handsome old partner (John McIntire).

Stiles takes charge once he realizes his danger, setting up a nighttime shootout in a factory full of shadows. Everyone converges on the spot, from the FBI agents anxiously tracking Manly, to the crooked cop with his mind on murder, to the chief of police eager to erase the stain on his department. The title of the movie is supposed to imply that such things could happen anywhere in the United States, but for old-fashioned drama The Street With No Name stands out as a worthy destination.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.