Newspaperman Myron McCormick is killed while investigating a complicated racket involving labor unions, so his buddy, ADA Franchot Tone, starts investigating. The governor wants to appoint a special prosecutor, and support for him comes from three sources: his boss, District Attorney Walter Vaughn; politically connected Winifred Lenihan, and Marc Lawrence, a strange character first spotted handing out a thousand dollars. He likes to help people. The thing is, they all know about the others and warn Tone about them.
The most interesting thing about the movie -- besides cameos and uncredited extras for Henry Fonda, Betty Blythe, Marlene Dietrich and John Garfield (it was shot in New York and Tone used his connections to get his stage and screen buddies in) -- is the sometimes absurdly subjective camerawork by Don Malkames. One of the roots of noir is the German expressionist camera, and after about a third of the way into the movie, I got the impression that it was all point-of-view shots, and the watcher was not the audience, but the actual murderer.
The movie is sometimes too free with the tough-hero tropes for someone like Tone, who was a fine actor, but who always gives me the impression he's not really thinking about what he's doing at the moment. Still, it's an impressive noir with a nicely murky plot and something a bit different in the camerawork. I was very pleased to have seen it.
The most interesting thing about the movie -- besides cameos and uncredited extras for Henry Fonda, Betty Blythe, Marlene Dietrich and John Garfield (it was shot in New York and Tone used his connections to get his stage and screen buddies in) -- is the sometimes absurdly subjective camerawork by Don Malkames. One of the roots of noir is the German expressionist camera, and after about a third of the way into the movie, I got the impression that it was all point-of-view shots, and the watcher was not the audience, but the actual murderer.
The movie is sometimes too free with the tough-hero tropes for someone like Tone, who was a fine actor, but who always gives me the impression he's not really thinking about what he's doing at the moment. Still, it's an impressive noir with a nicely murky plot and something a bit different in the camerawork. I was very pleased to have seen it.