Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Don Taylor, Dorothy Hart, Frank Conroy, Ted de Corsia, House Jameson, Anne Sargent, Adelaide Klein, Grover Burgess, Tom Pedi, Enid Markey, voice of Mark Hellinger. Screenplay: Albert Maltz, Malvin Wald. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: John DeCuir. Film editing: Paul Weatherwax. Music: Miklós Rózsa, Frank Skinner.
This hugely influential police procedural won two Oscars, for William H. Daniels's cinematography and Paul Weatherwax's film editing. Which is as it should be: What excitement and interest the film has today, after years of derivative movies and TV shows, is in the documentation of New York City streets and landmarks in the years just after World War II and in the brilliantly paced chase scene that comes at the climax, when the murderer scales the Williamsburg Bridge to evade the cops pursuing him. The script now feels clichéd, even if some of the clichés were new, and the dialogue sometimes banal and over-expository. Nor does producer Mark Hellinger's occasionally pretentious voice-over narration sound right to the ear. Barry Fitzgerald overindulges his leprechaun schtick as Lt. Muldoon and Don Taylor is a bit too determinedly callow as Halloran. On the other hand, the supporting cast is convincingly real. It's fun to watch today for some faces that became familiar later, many of them performing on Broadway at the time the film was made and rounded up for bit parts. Look for Paul Ford, Kathleen Freeman, James Gregory, John Marley, Arthur O'Connell, David Opatoshu, Nehemiah Persoff, Molly Picon, and John Randolph among them. The director, Jules Dassin, and the screenwriters, Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald, were among those who fell afoul of the witch hunters of the blacklist in the 1950s.