No Questions Asked (1951)

Directed by Harold F Kress; produced by Nicholas Nayfack

Steve Kiever (Barry Sullivan) is an up and coming attorney for an insurance company. Unfortunately, he is not coming up as rapidly as he - or his mercenary fiancée, Ellen (Arlene Dahl) - would like. He decides to indulge in a related side-business: recovering stolen merchandise on behalf of the insurance company and collecting a commission for doing so. He doesn’t care that this leads to relations with organised crime, or that criminals are stealing loot they couldn’t possibly unload, just to ‘sell’ it back to the owners. Kiever doesn’t understand that success of this kind doesn’t last long.

No Questions Asked has a good premise, but little else. The story is predictable. We can see that Kiever is going to become involved in crime more than he should, and we can see that he will become an accessory to crimes himself. We can also see that Ellen will return, after throwing Kiever over for not being rich enough. Nothing that happens is a surprise.

The script, co-written by Sydney Sheldon, is ordinary. The worst thing about it is not its predictability, but the fact that there is no imagination in the climax. We know that Kiever is heading for a fall, and that it will likely teach him a moral lesson. But that lesson is blandly taught, even allowing Kiever to be a bit of a hero. There is no sudden realisation of wrong-doing; rather, Kiever seems to feel hard done by, and a little ticked off by the universe’s sense of justice.

The acting is just as average as the writing, with the exception of Jean Hagen as Joan, a colleague of Kiever’s who has a crush on him. A talented actress who, while she seemed best suited to playing comedy (eg. Adam’s Rib), even injecting an element of farce into her character (eg. Singin’ in the Rain), could also pack a punch in drama (eg. The Asphalt Jungle). Here, she is in serious mode, but with a light touch that makes her character seem all the more real - and all the more the girl a protagonist should want from the start.

Harold Kress is not renowned as a director, and No Questions Asked demonstrates why. He is, however, highly praised as an editor, eventually winning two Oscars in that field. Here, he does an adequate job but no more, though, to be honest, he has little to work with except Hagen.

No Questions Asked is not a bad movie, but it is certainly not a good one, either. It is a time-filler, for when a viewer has nothing else lined up to watch.