WOMEN FROM HEADQUARTERS (1950)

“Around the clock you will rescue children from unfit homes, neglectful parents, and crime provoking surroundings. On patrol of public parks, playgrounds, and schoolyards, you will keep a vigilant watch over safety of children. Our files tell a meaningful story of lost and despairing wrecks of girls led out of the shadows of crime and from the brink of destruction and suicide by the friendly hands of policewomen.”

“And nothing will stand between you and the unforeseen danger of your every assignment except what you’ve learned here at the academy. There’s a snub-nosed police revolver in your shoulder bags or under arm holsters that’s for your protection in emergency. Keep that in mind: for emergency only. Congratulations and good luck to each one of you.”

Given that Women from Headquarters is a bottom of the bill crime programmer from Republic Pictures, shot in only twelve days, one’s expectations would surely be low. Not so fast though — with a director like George Blair and with John MacBurnie behind the camera, it’s safe to raise the bar a little. By 1950 these cats, along with other members of Republic’s crime quickie crew (producer Stephen Auer, editor Harold Minter, etc.) had established a track record of modest but surprisingly good stuff (Streets of San Francisco, Post Office Investigator, Alias the Champ, Federal Agent at Large, Unmasked, and Destination Big House). All that being said, it’s a shame that Women from Headquarters falls short of expectations in just about every way imaginable.

Joyce Harper (Virginia Huston) and Ruby Kane (Barbra Fuller) have been struggling by on their own for years — Joyce practically raised the younger girl. But when the war came Joyce joined the Army nurses’ corps, leaving teenage Ruby without the crutch of an older role model. Now back together in Los Angeles, the two women (Ruby’s just turned 21) are trying to make a go of it as roommates in the brave new post-war world. At first glance, Ruby appears to be making out better. She’s got a nice gig hopping cars at a drive-in off Sunset and a steady boyfriend — though Joyce hardly approves. For her part, Joyce is struggling. She’s been bouncing from secretarial job to secretarial job, unattached and unable to find fulfilling work that doesn’t involved getting pawed by her bosses. She says early on, “when I got out of uniform I came back to a world I didn’t fit into. I felt sort of lost and unhappy in the work I’d done before.”

Joyce finally discovers her purpose on the night Ruby gets busted. Her motherly suspicions of the younger girl’s beau Max were well founded. While out on a date at a local watering hole (Ruby likes to get loaded) Max slips into the back room to negotiate a drug deal with the proprietor, leaving Ruby alone with her drink. When a drunken barfly tries to get fresh, Ruby tosses her highball in his face at precisely the moment a girl-boy cop team braces the bar on a routine check. Surprisingly, it’s Ruby who gets popped — the lady cop, Sergeant Rogers (Frances Charles), is prowling for suspected jailbait. Rogers puts Ruby in the backseat and drives her home to Joyce, who verifies the girl’s age and gets her off the hook. In the course of their conversation, Rogers gives Joyce the low-down on the LAPD and tells her she thinks she’d be a great fit.

Rogers wasn’t kidding either. Joyce churns her way through the LAPD academy and upon graduation is assigned to a plainclothes unit working directly out of headquarters. In her first few months on the job she amasses a record that would make Edmund Exley piss his pants: busting up high class gambling dens, saving kidnapped children, and chasing down bank robbers. Joyce even brings in a cop killer. Unfortunately all we get to see of her exploits are a montage of newspaper headlines and B roll of crooks on the run.

While all of this is happening Ruby is suspiciously absent from the movie. Following her near miss with the cops, she and Max bolt the Southland for Chicago. We don’t see her again until much later, after Joyce gets promoted to the narcotics squad. The headline-grabbing lady cop learns that her old friend has returned to California when she discovers her in the infirmary at the city jail, pregnant and battered by Max, now a hardcore felon. Sharing her tale of woe with her old pal, the naïve Ruby delivers the movie’s campiest line: “I was married to a criminal dope peddler.” Joyce agrees to get Ruby out of the clink if she rolls over on Max, who is then expected to stooge on his supplier, and on and on up the chain until Joyce can hopefully expose “Mr. Big.” Max’s paternal instincts kick in when he learns that Ruby is knocked up, and he happily spills on his bosses, leaving Joyce and her blue crew to move in and clean out the garbage.

I don’t know about you, but the two quotes set off at the top of the essay are worth getting excited about. They suggest a movie about female police officers more concerned with rolling their sleeves up and doing good work than with keeping their makeup on straight. Too bad for us, secretary turned cop Virginia Huston never wears a uniform or pounds a beat in this movie, and her face — delightful as it is — is always perfectly, and frustratingly, composed. In fact, she somehow manages to get through the picture almost entirely without showing off any real police work, and the early promise of those “despairing wrecks of girls” are left to the speeches, while that snub-nosed police revolver stays forever hidden in her shoulder bag.

Women from Headquarters’s promise as a film noir is wrapped up in Joyce’s feelings of angst at her return from the war, and her unusual career response to those feelings. This inability of the returning veteran to reintegrate into domestic society is one of the cornerstones of noir; it’s only too bad that the film doesn’t do more with it, though surely we have to award Republic some points for the gender switch. While Joyce’s response to her newfound malaise is to defy societal expectations by pursuing a potentially deadly job in the police force, she outwardly displays none of the angst or inner turmoil that we hope for. Certainly we can’t blame the actress. For what its worth, this is the same Virginia Huston who played Robert Mitchum’s girlfriend Ann in that noiriest of noirs, Out of the Past. Huston’s filmography lists only 13 roles, but the majority were top shelf projects. We have to believe she could act a little.

Possibly the failure is the normally excellent Blair’s. He allows his cast to stumble through, and fails to manipulate his camera and the lighting with same verve that I’d come to expect from him. In the end, this is an instance when we have to accept the shortcomings of B material and make allowances. The story is too plot driven and the reels are simply too few to allow for an A picture exploration into Joyce’s psyche. Regardless, while Women from Headquarters’s failure to rate as a film noir is forgivable, its failure to entertain isn’t. The promise of the subject matter gives me shivers, the noir-style character tropes are evident, and the thing moves along quickly enough, but it’s a sloppily rendered paint by numbers picture that isn’t particularly worth looking at. If you want to see somewhat similar material handled the right way, check out 1953’s Code Two.

Women from Headquarters (1950)

Directed by George Blair

Written by Gene Lewis

Starring Virginia Huston, Robert Rockwell, and Barbra Fuller

Cinematography by John MacBurnie

Released by Republic Pictures

Running time 60 minutes

CHINATOWN AT MIDNIGHT (1949)

“You’re a very paradoxical young man.”

Shops closing early! There’s a killer thief on the loose in the Chinatown section of San Francisco, and the cops are hot on his trail. That’s a bare bones plot description if ever there was one, yet it jibes well with Chinatown at Midnight — a rabbit punch of a movie that cashes in on the success of He Walked by Night, the granddaddy of film noir cop procedurals, released to theaters just a year before. It’s a fast paced little movie with just a few cheap sets and scenes glued together by plenty of voice-of-god narration. But it also boasts some solid basic filmmaking; looking good in spite of its meager budget, with some striking photography and a few flashy sequences that belie its doghouse budget. The film is ruined by its sloppy, often nonsensical script, though to its credit it manages to dodge the expected racial stereotypes.

The man on the lam is Clifford Ward, played by Hurd Hatfield, who had a modest acting career after making a big splash as the title character in 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Hatfield seems a little too urbane to be credible as the unbalanced heist man-cum-killer in this film, but the movie does its best to justify his casting by spinning the murderer as a multi-lingual dandy whose bachelor pad landlady raves about his “excellent taste for a young man.” Hatfield’s Clifford is in cahoots with an upscale interior decorator Lisa Marcel (Jacqueline DeWit). She locates expensive pieces in expensive shops; then he shows up at closing time and knocks the places over. Maybe he loves the older woman, maybe he doesn’t — who knows the angles? She doesn’t make eyes at him and she doesn’t pay him off either. We never get the dope on their relationship. Maybe Clifford just likes to takes risks — he certainly has no qualms about killing. Just after we meet him, he visits a curio shop in Chinatown and guns down the young clerk; when the girl in the back room tries to call the cops he blasts her too. In a veer from the expected, Clifford actually picks up the receiver and completes her phone call: “come quick, there’s been a robbery and shooting!” The zinger is that his frantic exchange with the switchboard operator is in fluent Chinese.

So that’s why we get Hurd Hatfield instead of a tough monkey like Charles McGraw or Mark Stevens. Our boy is able to call in his crime with a Cantonese dialect, convincing the cops that their quarry must be Chinese. From that moment onward Chinatown at Midnight is a cat-and-mouse game between Clifford and San Francisco’s finest, led by the pugnacious Captain Brown, played by iconic film noir actor Tom Powers. (His name might not be that familiar, but Powers probably appeared in a million crime films — often as a cop — though he got his bust in the noir hall of fame for playing the ill-fated Mr. Dietrichson in the big one, Double Indemnity.) The procedural aspects of Chinatown at Midnight are handled with care, showing viewers a few of the clever ruses used by the police to ferret out a suspect — the best is when a clever matron poses as a census taker in order to search the flophouses and tenements. The film is divided roughly in half between Clifford’s occasionally witty escapes and the semi-doc cop stuff, but the thing never really gets off the ground until the final reel, when Clifford starts to knuckle under from a nagging case of malaria and the ever-tightening dragnet. He finally takes to the rooftops, automatic in hand, for an exciting showdown with the buys in blue — pity our boy Clifford: they've got Tommy guns.

This is a fairly competent and successful effort for all involved, except the hack screenwriters. The worst moment in the story has to be the most eyeball-rolling example of shoddy police work in the entire canon of B movies — one that altogether sums up the visual strengths and the narrative weaknesses of the film: there’s a sequence in the middle that places Clifford within arm’s reach of justice. Having just killed again to keep the law at bay, he is forced to hide in a darkened room after his shots draw the police. What follows is exciting stuff, well-edited, strikingly filmed, and very tense — culminating in a pitch black exchange of gunfire that brings to mind Henry Morgan’s big moment in Red Light. It’s an exhilarating scene, the sort of thing that draws us all to film noir. Yet after Clifford makes a break for it, shedding his jacket, tie, and .38 revolver in a back alley garbage bin, he attempts to hide by shuffling into a queue of four or five down-and-outers waiting in a bread line. When the dicks come huffing and puffing around the corner a breath or two later, they just give up — tossing their hands into the air without so much as a look around, completely giving up, but not before adding for our sake, “Funny, he didn’t look Chinese to me!” Too bad for them that their rabbit is five feet away, and all they have to do is brace the hobos in order to put Clifford in the little green room at Quentin. They can’t even manage a pathetic “which way did he go?”

Photographed by prolific journeyman Henry Freulich, clearly influenced by John Alton, Chinatown at Midnight is heavily steeped in the noir visual style. The cardboard sets and low rent cast are more emblematic of a poverty row effort than a second-feature from a little major like Columbia, but the studio’s B-roll exteriors of various San Francisco locales almost pull off the illusion of an on-location shoot, and further separate it from Poverty Row. The acting here is merely passable and the script is a bloody shame, but Freulich and director Seymour Friedman give the finished film has a strong visual identity, even if everything else is from hunger.

Chinatown at Midnight (1949)

Directed by Seymour Friedman

Produced by Sam Katzman

Written by Robert Libbott and Frank Burt

Cinematography by Henry Freulich

Art Direction by Paul Palmentola

Starring Hurd Hatfield, Jacqueline DeWit, and Tom Powers

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Running time 67 minutes.

TIME TABLE (1956)

For the men of film noir, the ones who fought the war and returned to a changing country, the idea of a dutiful and submissive wife, a white collar, and a white picket fence just couldn’t cut it — and heaven knows our noir heroes tried to fit back in. They squirm in their suits, tugging at those tight collars, chewing their nails, always on the make for that thing that might break the monotony and remind them of what it feels like to be alive. Pour another drink, Don Draper. 

Despite a five-decade career in film and television, Mark Stevens was most visible in the years immediately after the war. He made his first big splash with Lucille Ball and Bill Bendix in 1946’s The Dark Corner, followed by a pair of notable 1948 films: the FBI-noir The Street with No Name and the Academy heavyweight The Snake Pit. Stevens is of less interest for those projects (to me, at least) than he is for his 1950s work, after he struck out on his own. He was the force behind his own film production and music publishing companies (he could sing), as well as the star and occasional director of Big Town, a popular weekly television series in which he played a crime-busting newsman. Although Stevens failed to carve out a lasting place as filmmaker, his earliest efforts, Cry Vengeance (1954) and Time Table (1956) — both surprisingly good noirs — beg for increased attention in contemporary film circles and make one wish the fledgling director had framed more crime movies. 

Unfortunately for anyone who hasn’t seen Time Table, it’s impossible to discuss without spoiling its big twist — so let’s get it out of the way right now (and don’t worry, the reveal occurs in the first half of the film):  Stevens plays an insurance investigator who — here it comes — turns out to be the brains behind the very robbery he’s asked to solve. Although it’s an old saw that may bring to mind Double Indemnity, Time Table more closely resembles titles like Roadblock, Private Hell 36, and The Man Who Cheated Himself.  It draws from a myriad of noir films rather than any one in particular. This much is certain: in spite of being a cinematic mutt, Time Table is an intriguing movie that deserves to be seen. However, if your taste prohibits enjoyment of a “derivative” film, then it probably isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you are able to connect with a noir picture that utilizes familiar genre tropes and still manages to captivate, keep reading. Or better yet, go track this down. It will surprise you. 

The movie opens with a ten-minute-long heist sequence, cleverly staged on a train speeding west through the Arizona night. A polished crook posing as a doctor manages to crack the train’s safe and snatch all the money inside. The job is perfectly planned and calmly executed, using high-tech explosives, a precisely detailed timetable, and a cagey scheme involving a “sick” passenger and his “wife” — both in on the caper. The trio of bandits exit the train in a scrubby desert town, and abscond in an ambulance with half a million dollars. The railroad’s insurers will have to make good on the policy unless the money is recovered, so they assign the case to Charlie Norman (Stevens), their best man, forcing him and his wife Ruth (Marianne Stewart) to delay their long-planned Mexican vacation. Charlie is partnered with railroad detective and best friend (yeah, yeah) Joe Armstrong (King Calder). 

The second act contains a healthy dose of cop procedure. Charlie and Joe chase leads, pal around with the yokel cops, and generally marvel at the skill of their quarry — all while Charlie becomes more preoccupied and nervous. We’re convinced his frustration owes to the lost vacation, until the twist occurs and we discover otherwise: Charlie masterminded the entire robbery in the first place, and he’s torn up because his perfect crime is unraveling all around him. He dreamt up the caper, recruited the players, and worked out the all-important timetable. Why? For some unknown reason Charlie is fed up — with his job, with his home, and with his marriage. He intended to pull off the heist, then use his Mexican holiday as a means to skip out on his old life and rendezvous with his accomplices south of the border. There he intends to cut up the money and start fresh in Argentina with new squeeze Linda (Felicia Farr). Yet fate, as it so often does in film noir, has a different agenda: one of the crew is shot and killed, throwing off the timetable and forcing everyone to hole up. In the meantime, Joe’s investigation starts to pay off, while Charlie grows more desperate. He is finally forced to commit a murder in order to protect himself, scaring his remaining co-conspirators into making a run for it. Just as Joe finally gets wise to the whole scheme, Charlie heads for Tijuana in a last-ditch effort to find Linda. With the Federales riding shotgun, Joe corners the lovers in TJ and guns are drawn… 

Whether explored deeply or viewed as pure escapism, Time Table scores. Aben Kandel’s (City for Conquest) accomplished script surpasses typical B movie fare, with an airtight plot and plenty of tough, pithy dialog. Kandel also has a gift for subtle double-entendres that reinforce the story’s central theme and reward attentive viewers. For example, early on when Ruth replaces the blanket on a dozing Charlie, he mumbles, “What’re you trying to do, smother me?” All of Kandel’s characters, in one way or another and regardless of their gender, are struggling to overcome the emptiness of a world in which they’ve discovered, all too late, that the fairy tale assurances of their younger years are simply not meant to be. Charlie finds no comfort in his bleak, middle class existence. Fulfilling the role of the perfect wife brings Ruth little but disappointment. Linda trades her alcoholic, disgraced husband for the promise of a better life with Charlie, but instead leaps from the frying pan into an altogether deadlier fire. Even Joe runs himself into the ground living up to the image of a dead cop father who taught him there’s no such thing as a perfect crime. In Time Table, perfection is as ethereal as the haze of cigarette smoke that obscures each frame. 

Stevens’ direction might be described as workmanlike, but he understands where to linger, when to move quickly, and how to get a lot out of his actors — Time Table has a great cast. Wesley Addy (Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) is fantastic as the drunken ex-M.D. who holds it together just long enough to rob the train, while King Calder, who worked previously with Stevens during his run as television’s private detective Martin Kane, excels as the relentless railroad cop. Calder’s face and body language are so hang-dog it’s hard to imagine him in roles outside of the crime genre. Two of the most memorable performances come from actors in small parts. Jack Klugman, appearing in his first film role after having met Stevens on an episode of Big Town, plays a chain-smoking wheelman who squirms under the lights like nobody’s business. Klugman has just one scene, but he steals it cleanly away from Stevens and Calder. The second standout is Alan Reed, whose name and face may not be incredibly familiar, though his unforgettable and iconic voice certainly is — even thirty-five years after his death. Reed’s stocky build, unique look, and instant pathos made him a natural for this stuff — it’s surprising he didn’t make more crime pictures. Reed vividly brings to life the helicopter pilot most responsible for Charlie’s plans going down the tube. He burns the candle from both ends and pays a steep price for turning stool pigeon — in one of the film’s best moments. 

At a quick 79 minutes, Time Table is a second feature — it plows ahead, sacrificing much at the altar of brevity. Yet while similar films are repudiated as rote exercises in “what happened next?” moviemaking, they frequently provide an instructive lens through which we can examine the cultural values of their era. Time Table is such a film. At its core is the question of Charlie’s motivation to self-destruct, and he offers no clues beyond a vaguely expressed desire for a change. At a critical point in the final reel, Ruth confronts him: 

     “Charlie, why’d you do it? Why?” 

     “Why? What does it matter?”

And later in the same scene:

     “We had so much Charlie. Why, why?” 

     “The house becomes a prison, the job a trap.” 

     “What did you want?”

     “A new kind of life.”

Yet the film doesn’t explain why Charlie so desperately wants this new life. Personally and professionally he has everything a man could reasonably ask for — his situation is even admirable. Ruth is a kind and attractive woman for whom he has genuine affection, and his tough-guy job as an insurance cop makes him a bona fide man’s man. The most telling aspect of Time Table is how it takes for granted that viewers will embrace Charlie’s compulsion to escape his circumstances without being given a reason. 

Look closely at the absurdity of Charlie’s actions: he trades his job and his honor for a satchel of money; a fine suburban home for assuredly more squalid digs in Argentina; and a caring spouse another woman, albeit younger and a little prettier, who nevertheless seems to be cut from the same beige piece of cloth as his wife. It’s also worth pointing out that Linda is a Mexican — another way in which the film drives home the point that Charlie’s all-American situation somehow isn’t adequate. And he knows his trades are for keeps — permanently sanctified through blood and betrayal. After all, Charlie’s a law enforcement man who, like Walter Neff, understands the risks but believes his knowledge of the game provides an edge. At the same time, he is aware of the looming possibility of the little green room at Quentin, where one’s final black moments are strained listening for the plop-plop-fizz-fizz of everlasting relief.

Unlike in other noir pictures, the protagonist’s downfall can’t be attributed to a femme fatale. Time Table doesn’t have one. Sure, there’s a girl, but Charlie’s inamorata is hardly an upgrade on his wife. Here’s a guy who is winning the rat race and still wants out — he hates everything about his situation. The answer to his motivation lies in the movie’s unrelenting cynicism. Time Table consciously subverts the post-war American dream of happiness through national prosperity and material achievement. It thumbs its nose at the white bread promises of the Eisenhower era: the steady jobs, home-sweet-homes, and June Allyson wives that saturated mainstream media offerings. It gives us a protagonist who has achieved these material things and more, yet remains unfulfilled. In many ways, Charlie’s case is even more compelling than that of the pill-popping Ed Avery in another 1956 film, Nicholas Ray’s brilliant Bigger Than Life — if only because Time Table is neither a character study nor a message picture. For the men of film noir, the ones who fought the war and returned to a changing country, the idea of a dutiful and submissive wife, a white collar, and a white picket fence just couldn’t cut it — and heaven knows our noir heroes tried to fit back in. They squirm in their suits, tugging at those tight collars, chewing their nails, always on the make for that thing that might break the monotony and remind them of what it feels like to be alive. Pour another drink, Don Draper. 

What makes Time Table so enthralling (as well as numerous other film noirs), is that while modern audiences might find Charlie Norman’s gambit unfathomable or absurd, some of the 1956 crowd undoubtedly recognized themselves in him — feeling every bit as suffocated while having to acquiesce to the vanilla model of happiness offered up on countless roadside billboards, magazine advertisements, and sponsor-centric TV programs. Consequently, Charlie becomes a poster child for those who felt trapped in that uncanny era of prosperous conformity — and an authentic film noir anti-hero. In recognizing and understanding the daring of filmmakers who so openly questioned the fleeting promises of the American Dream, we further appreciate the enduring allure of film noir.

Time Table (1956)

Produced and Directed by Mark Stevens

Written by Aben Kandel

Cinematography by Charles Van Enger 

Art Direction by William Tuntke

Starring Mark Stevens, King Calder, Alan Reed, Jack Klugman, and Wesley Addy

Released by United Artists

Running time: 79 minutes

CRIME WAVE (1954)

Noir 101. The Essentials. Crime Wave.

Really?

If this little policier from Warner Bros. (filmed in 1952, released in ’54) isn’t part of your vocabulary then it needs to be; and considering it was finally released on DVD a few years ago, there’s no excuse not to see it. Crime Wave doesn’t stand out from a narrative point of view (despite a bucket of writers); the plot is routine, like a million other second features cranked out during the fifties. Although the story and characters are heavily steeped in noir tropes, it’s André De Toth’s sharp direction that sets it apart from other low budget crime pictures and demands that it be seen by any enthusiast. It can be argued that no other film noir is as influential as it is unknown.

The story is old hat: Ex-con tries to go straight. His old crew breaks out of the Q and comes knocking. When he refuses to help, they hold his fresh new wife in order to force him to take part in one last caper. All the while, the cops are along for the ride, except they don’t believe for a second that our boy is on the up and up.

The cast here is special, and although Sterling Hayden isn’t (necessarily) the protagonist, he dominates the film. This is the sort of role the movie gods had in mind when they placed Hayden in front of a camera: LAPD Detective Lieutenant Sims, bigger and tougher than any of the hoods in the mug book. For my money this is the role of Hayden’s career — not the meatiest or the most well known, but the one in which he leaves the impression of having been the part, rather than merely having played it. (Put it this way: during the DVD commentary, author James Ellroy asserts that Hayden in Crime Wave simply is Bud White.) There are those that prefer him in The Asphalt Jungle or The Killing, but Hayden has a distinct vibe as a cop that isn’t there when he’s playing a crook: you can cross to the other side of the street and dodge a hoodlum (and it isn’t like you won’t see Hayden coming a mile away) but you can’t avoid the police. With the force of the law behind him, the prospect of cop Hayden looking for you is scary as hell.

At a beefy six-and-a-half feet tall, Hayden towers over everyone else in the film. André De Toth and cameraman Burt Glennon keep the camera low, catching the big fellow from underneath but look down on all of the other actors, as if from Hayden’s point of view. He has to slouch, unkempt, a toothpick in his mouth, scruffy hat, tie perpetually twisted backwards — almost too big to be allowed. The film has numerous stellar sequences, but for Hayden one in particular stands out; it begins at around the eleven-minute mark and finds the cop in his homicide division office, interviewing an eyewitness about the Quentin breakout suspects. The scene opens with him at his desk, then it follows him around the bureau, hovering shark-like over a half-dozen routine interviews going on around the office. Ostensibly the purpose is pure semi-documentary storytelling, providing audiences with an up-close look into the inner workings of the LAPD: A middle-aged couple is extolling to one cop about how she and her guy (replete with bandages head) don’t really fight — she didn’t mean to conk him, they were just kidding around. At the next table, a hang dog B girl dripping with mascara and dime-store jewelry sobs about some chucklehead boyfriend from her past, while at yet another a career stool-pigeon chastises a junior man about bracing him in front of his neighbors. What makes the whole thing work is the extraordinary authenticity: pay attention to what is going on in the frame away from subject, almost as if the extras forgot for a moment the cameras were rolling. And this ain’t no soundstage — most of the scenes in Crime Wave, interiors and exteriors alike, are filmed in real Los Angeles locations. And if Hayden wasn’t so utterly believable as a LAPD homicide detective, circa 1952, none of it would work — he’s the glue that holds the entire movie together. If part of the allure of these old films is seeing things as they actually were way back when, this is a scene (and a film) that will keep you in goose bumps.

Then there’s Gene Nelson, of nimble feet and Oklahoma! fame, who plays Steve Lacey, ex-con. It’s on the plus side how Nelson underplays his part. His performance doesn’t offer much beyond matinee good looks and rolled up shirtsleeves. Like I said, this is Hayden’s movie, and Nelson keeps his character plenty quiet. Whether it was his idea or De Toth’s, Steve Lacey is Lieutenant Sims perfect foil. From a noir perspective, Lacey is a protagonist in the classic mold: trying to make good after doing some hard time: employed, married, and with a permanent address. Crane Wilbur’s story puts him in the classic fix: when his old cellmates come looking for help, he knows that refusing them puts everything he’s worked for at risk, while anything short of dropping the proverbial dime puts him squarely on the wrong side of the law. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: the rock and the hard place of classic film noir, with only fate to decide whether or not a man comes out clean on the other side.

The wife is model-turned-actress Phyllis Kirk. Kirk did most of her work on television, but if you remember her at all it’s probably as the damsel in distress in André De Toth’s most famous picture: House of Wax. Kirk and Nelson are well matched — and the mature depiction of their relationship is surprising for a film noir, and rather progressive when we consider typical gender depictions in similar crime films. Ellen Lacey wears the pants in the family; her assertiveness perfectly balances her husband’s diffidence — yet she’s neither a nag nor a shrew. Steve Lacey’s time behind bars has wrecked his ability to function outside the walls. He needs this strong woman to prop him up and constantly assure him that better days lie ahead. That he had been, of all things, a fighter pilot during the war especially heightens the unusual nature of their relationship. Gone is the recklessness and bravado typically found in screen characterizations of such men, while the wife is equally surprising — a strong, modern woman who is neither a femme fatale nor June Allyson clone. The film gives us an ideally matched couple, each possessed of what the other needs.

The crooks. Ted de Corsia: Eddie Muller says he looks like he was born in a boxing gym. James Ellroy: he “oozes Pomade.” Iconic in The Naked City, de Corsia shines reliably here as the brains behind the breakout. Crime Wave’s theatrical audience was familiar with him in heavy roles dating all the way back to The Lady from Shanghai. De Corsia’s screen persona was as hard-boiled as they come, think of him as an old-school Raymond Burr. His young partner is Charles Buchinsky, who also worked for De Toth in House of Wax. Of course Charles Bronson would go on to be one of the icons of seventies crime films, and one of the biggest movie stars in the world. It’s always jarring to see him this young, his face somewhat lined, but nowhere near as weather-beaten as it would soon become. Crime Wave offered the young actor one of his best early roles: he actually gets to act a little here, and even has a few moments where his physicality is on display. The juxtaposition of a studio era character actor as old school as de Corsia with someone as contemporary as Bronson is yet another reason to examine this film. Then there’s Tim Carey, one of the wild men of the American movie scene. There’s not enough room in any film review to dig into the strange case of Tim Carey, though on the strength of his appearance alone this one is worth the price of admission. His few brief moments of screen time are so bizarre — whether he’s at the center of the shot or mugging from the corner of the frame — that Crime Wave would be notable if for no other reason.  

Enough about the cast, as good as they are, there are more worthwhile reasons to watch this, especially if you appreciate how a film looks, even more if you can feel a film. Usually when a noir essayist digs on cinematography, they’ll discuss the lighting and composition of individual shots — I’m not going to do that. From top to bottom, Crime Wave is a beautifully and thoughtfully staged movie, yet it’s not a one-trick-pony when it comes to visual style (dig, Witness to Murder). Instead, it’s a movie that employs a variety of techniques depending on what individual scenes call for. The sunlit exteriors are pure documentary naturalism: showing LA locales (Burbank, Glendale, downtown) in a blunt, “this is the city” fashion. It’s difficult to follow the movie during these scenes; one’s inclination is to instead focus on signs and landmarks, trying to get a feel for the way the streets, the people, and the cars looked during those spectacular post-war years. At night, Glennon goes for drama, placing klieg lights in off kilter spots to create a chiaroscuro effect that seems as contrived as the day shots seem real, yet somehow it works, and the transitions barely register.

However the scenes are staged, the greatest thing about Crime Wave is where they are filmed: on location all the way through — and not just the exteriors. De Toth somehow swung access to city hall; the homicide bureau scenes are the real deal. Crime Wave is a superlative example of the way in which a low budget feature could be extraordinary: without money to build sets or dictate production values, De Toth was forced to find locations for the film, and it’s clear after just a single viewing that he had a peculiar talent for doing so: Crime Wave is one the most attractive, maybe even exhilarating, film noirs ever made. Hit the pause button on almost any frame, and you’ll find something to linger on. De Toth successfully captured all of the content tropes and moviemaking techniques that had become germane to film noir in this tiny little film. It’s astonishing that he did it with only half of his promised budget, and in a shoot of only thirteen days. The location work of The Naked City, the backseat point of view from Gun Crazy, the tones of John Alton, the jittery handheld cameras, semi-professional actors, and the quagmire of the ceaseless urban landscape. This a mean, unglamorous movie — populated with Dudley Smith cops ready to shoot a suspect in the back, hard-boiled killers, damaged goods, floozies, stool pigeons, strongarms, and professional losers. The good, the bad — even the insane —  all trying to claw their way through a world that no longer gives a damn. It’s a cheap, but delicious buffet of everything noir buffs hunger for — and the final few frames make for one hell of a dessert. It should be on many of those ubiquitous top-ten lists, but the guy beside you probably still hasn’t seen it.

Crime Wave (1954, filmed 1952)

Directed by André De Toth
Screenplay by Crane Wilbur
Adaptation by Bernard Gordon and Richard Wormser
Original Story by John and Ward Hawkins
Produced by Brian Foy
Cinematography by Burt Glennon
Art Direction by Stanley Fleischer
Starring Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, and Phyllis Kirk
Released by Warner Bros. 
Running time: 74 minutes

LAPD Prowl Car

Skid Row service station, opening heist

Daily life in the detective bureau

Looking up at Hayden

Phyllis Kirk

Typical shot of Hayden crowding the frame

Nelson cuffed, Kirk looks on

Ted de Corsia and Charles Bronson

Glennon’s creative lighting

Tim Carey

Gene Nelson

Great lighting

Classic film noir imagery

Naturally lit, beautifully framed

Crosstown car chase