Walk a Crooked Mile (1948)

Directed by Gordon Douglas; produced by Edward Small and Grant Whytock

The murder of an FBI agent while investigating a security issue at a nuclear research facility leads his superior, Dan O’Hara (Dennis O’Keefe), to a suspected Communist espionage ring. Information is being sent overseas, bringing Scotland Yard detective Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) to the U.S. Together the two investigators must run down the members of the gang, and their inside contact, before more vital information is lost.

A fairly routine espionage-crime drama, Walk a Crooked Mile is enlivened by the story which, after an average first half, becomes more of a whodunnit with regard to suspects. This element, combined with some good action scenes, elevates what would otherwise be a mundane picture.

O’Keefe had a busy time in the late 1940s and ‘50s, and much of it was taken up with crime movies and film noir, a number of them already reviewed on this blog. Though not a great actor, he was good, and capable of portraying a hero or a villain. Here, he is the former. Though he and Hayward do well enough in their roles, there really isn’t much for them to work with. The characters are very straightforward, not particularly interesting but involving simply due to their actions in relation to the story.

The other characters merely fill the spots assigned to them in the script, and are not given much in the way of personalities. The suspects are interchangeable, their characters, such as they are, providing nothing either in the way of motivation for their actions or clues to their possible crimes. Their nationalities seem to be of greater significance than anything else. The writer treats the suspects’ ethnicity as no guarantee of their innocence or guilt; in fact, it is used to confuse the possibilities in the viewers’ minds.

Nor is any more attention given to the criminals. The group of Communists have, as a group, rather more drive than anyone else in the movie, but, again, as individuals, they are largely anonymous. Their origins are not given, one member’s nationality being seen in a file as ‘Slavic’. However, as with their inside contact, the Communist agents, while principally foreign, include some who might be American of British ancestry. (Of the players, Raymond Burr plays one of the villains, while character actor Ray Teal is seen as a police sergeant at an early murder scene, and Gale Storm provides a voice on a recording.)

The direction is decently handled. The action scenes, as mentioned above, help the film quite a bit, a sequence in which the villains capture the heroes, and the climactic shoot-out, being highlights. For the most part, though, the direction is treated as plainly as the other aspects of the movie.

Walk a Crooked Mile is certainly not let down by any of its components, though it is uplifted really only by the script and the direction. It is an entertaining, if not original or imaginative, movie.

The Intruder (1953)

Directed by Guy Hamilton; produced by Ivan Foxwell

Wolf Merton (Jack Hawkins), a successful stock broker and former British Army colonel, returns home one night to find a burglar in his home. What’s more startling than the criminal’s presence is his identity: ‘Ginger’ Edwards (Michael Medwin), an erstwhile member of Merton’s regiment. Edwards flees the scene, leaving his former commanding officer with a mystery he feels compelled to solve: why would a good soldier, decorated for bravery, turn to crime? 

Some mystery-movies need to be complicated to be involving, their plots intricate. Some are very straightforward, yet draw the viewer in with their characters, and with the story’s construction. The Intruder falls into the latter category. As Merton tries to track down the fugitive, he meets a number of those whom he knew from the war; most have prospered to various extents, and most deserved to. Each shows a different personality, a different aspect to the regiment and the war.

In a way, though Edwards is the central character, the story is less a mystery than it is a depiction, a depiction of not just one character but several. It doesn’t go deeply into each; it is not a study of personalities. It shows something with which people in the early 1950s would have been familiar: the cross-section of humanity that went to war.

Merton is a well-drawn character, though just a few strokes of the writer’s pen are used to illustrate him. We see the brusque regimental commander, the sort of man that most of his soldiers saw, but we also understand the ordinary man behind that role, strong, but not really forceful. Edwards is less defined, and comes across more as someone to whom things have happened, rather than a factor in his own destiny.

This highlights the less successful elements of the story. While the causes of Edwards’s downfall are plausible enough, there is no graduation to his situation’s deterioration. It all occurs more or less at once, even on one day, and is therefore a tragic tale rather than a tragedy, which would have been better.

But the creation of the mystery is, as implied above, not really the draw in The Intruder. Aside from the characters, and their interaction, there are smaller features that suggest thought was put into the story and its presentation. At the beginning, for instance, in the initial flashback, Merton’s regiment is fighting in the Western Desert, and equipped with Sherman tanks. By the time they are in France, breaking out from Normandy, they are equipped with Cromwells. This is not only accurate (and, considering hundreds of thousands of Britons alive in 1953 would have served with tanks, and tens of thousands in tanks, there was a need for that), but gives the story a sense of progression; a change of something so significant suggests the passage of time.

While The Intruder might be seen as a mystery or a crime-drama, it’s more a set of character sketches, interesting and entertaining - one quite amusing - that makes a coherent and satisfying film.

Ride Lonesome (1959)

Directed and produced by Budd Boetticher

Bounty hunter Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) has captured fugitive murderer Billy John (James Best), intending to take him to justice in the town of Santa Cruz. But between capture and destination, there are any number of obstacles, including a pair of rivals (Pernell Roberts, James Coburn), hostile Indians, and the killer’s brother (Lee Van Cleef). On top of that, Brigade has a plan that he’s keeping to himself, which creates its own hazards.

Ride Lonesome is one of the seven films that Scott made with director Boetticher and executive-producer Harry Joe Brown, a number, such as this one, written by Burt Kennedy. They are well-directed and acted films; the stories are not always strong, but the scripts create interesting characters in exciting situations.

That is a good description of Ride Lonesome. The story could have used some attention. The initial problems that Brigade encounters arise from an Indian raid, which doesn’t really have a good reason. Even the characters discuss the illogic of the Apaches attacking whites at that time and place. It would appear that the raid is used principally to set up the first gun-battle without having recourse to the criminals who are following Brigade: the purpose of keeping the two parties separate until the climax becomes clear later. Even so, the writer could have devised another way, since the Indian menace is entirely forgotten after the first third of the film.

The best part of the script comes, as it does in most of the Scott/Boetticher movies, in the characters. Brigade’s interaction with Boone (Roberts) is one of respect, even admiration, but with a none-too-subtle tension, since Boone needs to bring in Billy John himself to win amnesty for some unspecified crimes he and his pal Whit (Coburn) committed. Those two characters provide interest themselves: it’s never revealed what they have done, but since they seem decent men, it’s hard to think it was as bad as Billy John’s crime.

The acting is good, though nothing outstanding. By this time, Scott could have portrayed the rugged, quiet westerner in his sleep, but he nonetheless gives Brigade life, and makes the viewer wonder what is going on behind the lined face. He provides his characters with more introspection than John Wayne or Gary Cooper ever did, making the jaded loner a particular specialty of his.

The supporting players do a good job. Roberts and Coburn make their semi-bad guys likeable enough that the viewer is sympathetic to their goals. Indeed, the viewer may want Brigade to go easier on those two than he is; another reason to keep with the movie to see how it unfolds. Van Cleef, having worked his way up from villain’s henchman in 1952’s High Noon, to the leadership of a gang, has a surprisingly effective half-minute at the climax, when his face and words perfectly imply the remorse that a tough bad-guy isn’t allowed to express.

With good action, well-crafted characters and compelling tension, Ride Lonesome’s less impressive qualities may be disregarded. It’s an enjoyable journey on the well-trod trail of the western movie.

Fourteen Hours (1951)

Directed by Henry Hathaway; produced by Sol C Siegel

A young man (Richard Basehart), staying at a New York hotel, accepts his breakfast from a waiter (Frank Faylen). A minute later, the waiter finds the guest on the ledge outside the window, fifteen floors above the street. For the next half-day, police and psychiatrists find themselves in a stand-off against the man and his desire to kill himself.

Fewer plots could be simpler than that of Fourteen Hours, yet few so simple are handled so well. The story revolves around the ledge and the room behind it – I am surprised to find that it was not adapted from a stage-play – but the acting, directing and writing make it riveting.

Basehart is one of the unsung stars of the late 1940s through the ‘50s. He was convincing in every role: psychopathic killer in He Walks By Night, would-be patriotic dictator in the French Revolution film noir Reign of Terror, reluctant soldier and leader in Fixed Bayonets!, unhappy husband in Tension – and the confused, anguished Robert Cosick in Fourteen Hours. When we first see him, it is literally on the brink, and his violent shaking – from the sheer nervousness of the situation – is almost contagious to the audience. He makes his character someone who knew he had to step out on to the ledge, but is unsure of what should follow, not wanting the help he knows he needs. Basehart is entirely credible.

Paul Douglas, as unlikely a lead actor as you’ll find in movies, plays Dunnigan, an ordinary traffic cop who first sees and communicates with Cosick. His sympathy and honesty appeal to the would-be suicide, and Dunnigan is kept on the job by his less successful superiors. Dunnigan knows he is out of his depth and tries to evade the responsibility, but when he realises he may be Cosick’s best chance, he gains confidence, with both his bosses and the young man. Douglas’s face reveals much of his character, as when he reacts with silent disgust to some remarks of on-lookers about Cosick.

Other actors stand out, such as Howard Da Silva (his name spelled ‘da Silva’ here) as the coarse, frustrated police deputy chief; Agnes Moorehead as the self-absorbed mother you really want to smack, and Robert Keith as the father who’s aware of his shortcomings as a parent but who also loves the son he barely knows. Fourteen Hours is loaded with thespian talent, contemporary and future: Grace Kelly has her first movie role, Jeffrey Hunter and Debra Paget as a pair just starting a relationship; Barbara Bel Geddes as Cosick’s girlfriend; Jeff Corey, John Randolph, Brian Keith (Robert’s son), John Cassavetes, Ossie Davis, Harvey Lembeck and Richard Beymer all have bit parts.

The direction is spot-on. Hathaway, a veteran director by 1951, with many more films ahead of him, quite a few of them westerns, manages to make suspenseful 92 minutes largely comprising a man standing still. He uses some characters to create tension - Moorehead’s is a walking reason for Cosick to jump - while some attempts to resolve the situation are indicated to the audience – but not the characters - as disasters waiting to happen. There are little touches that add to the film, such as when Cosick smiles at the simplicity of watching a cigarette fall fifteen floors, or the crowd’s reaction, heard in the background, when the jumper stoops to accept a glass of water.

The script is the weakest of the three elements that make this picture, though it is still strong. It loses points for including a couple of side-stories (those involving Kelly on the one hand, and Hunter and Paget on the other). These, like the cabbies’ macabre bet, were put in to show the effect of Cosick’s situation on other people. The side-stories, however, seem shoe-horned in, and contrived.

Apart from these, the writing is very good. Though we have a psychiatrist’s explanation of Cosick’s motives, we are never really sure of why he is threatening suicide. Despite claims by some characters, he is clearly not seeking publicity; confused, he can’t get his mind around a solution to his problems because he can’t figure out exactly what the problems are. His motives are, in any case, unimportant except as a means of coaxing him from death, and those trying to do just that understand it. As an aside, while undoubtedly the way things were handled in ‘51, the police reaction in Fourteen Hours would make today’s crisis-negotiators cringe.

Suspenseful, even exciting, Fourteen Hours has all the elements to hold one’s attention – if not for the period of time in the title, then certainly for the whole length of the movie.