One wonders what Werker's contribution to this title is as it just feels like a Mann film through and through. with its semi-documentary approach likening it to the latter's T-MEN (1947) in particular. On its own, the film is said to have served as a virtual template for the DRAGNET TV series (whose creator, Jack Webb, appears here as a police lab technician).
Richard Basehart's characterization of the coldly calculating criminal was possibly the most compelling to be depicted on the screen since the time of Fritz Lang's M (1931). His resourcefulness and devious nature clearly foreshadowed the more obviously maniacal villains of much later films, such as Scorpio in DIRTY HARRY (1971; as in that picture, the hero's sidekick eventually ends up in a wheelchair) and even Hannibal Lecter. Incidentally, the episode of the criminal operating on himself when wounded has since become a cliché (this was probably the first such instance in cinema) but the numerous shootouts were similarly potent.
Also influential is the use of storm drains as both a haven and a conveniently invisible means of travel for the killer the most notable example, of course, being THE THIRD MAN (1949). Terse and suspenseful, the film is given an added sheen by virtue of John Alton's peerless cinematography (evident in the MGM DVD I watched, but not the various Public Domain prints in circulation; see the DVD Beaver comparison for confirmation).
Richard Basehart's characterization of the coldly calculating criminal was possibly the most compelling to be depicted on the screen since the time of Fritz Lang's M (1931). His resourcefulness and devious nature clearly foreshadowed the more obviously maniacal villains of much later films, such as Scorpio in DIRTY HARRY (1971; as in that picture, the hero's sidekick eventually ends up in a wheelchair) and even Hannibal Lecter. Incidentally, the episode of the criminal operating on himself when wounded has since become a cliché (this was probably the first such instance in cinema) but the numerous shootouts were similarly potent.
Also influential is the use of storm drains as both a haven and a conveniently invisible means of travel for the killer the most notable example, of course, being THE THIRD MAN (1949). Terse and suspenseful, the film is given an added sheen by virtue of John Alton's peerless cinematography (evident in the MGM DVD I watched, but not the various Public Domain prints in circulation; see the DVD Beaver comparison for confirmation).