Frank Tuttle returns to the world where borderline psychotics pursue their crumbling self-interests that he investigated in 1942's THIS GUN FOR HIRE, but this one doesn't work. In the midst of hysterical creeps -- including Edmond O'Brien in an astonishingly obnoxious, one-note performance -- the only calm voices are Brian Donleavy as the shift commander and Natalie Wood as a kidnapped teenager trying to talk her way out from her kidnapper, a brain-damaged Raymond Burr during his creepy murderer phase.
Unfortunately, the hysteria simply detracts from the terror of the situation: instead of letting the audience provide their own emotions, we have hysterical cops, and that lessens the effect. Compare that with the calm manner in which Robert Preston chases the seemingly calm Alan Ladd in the 1942 noir -- or its best expression in THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, in which everyone is just doing his job. Even the comedy lull, in which Tina Carver is booked and revealed to have married multiple servicemen for their pay, doesn't work when you notice that one of the goggling drunks observing the activity is Fred Kelsey, perpetual dumb cop, unable to prevent this breakdown in society.
Veteran DP John Seitz does provide some interesting visuals -- indeed, the whole production looks to be a gloss on THIS GUN FOR HIRE, on which he was also the director of photography. But this is 1956 and the noir cycle is near the end. The crazies who commit crimes at this point don't do them for Nazi Germany or profit, any more, but because they are crazy. The genre is on its last legs and already changing into something different with pieces like Clouzot's DIABOLIQUE and Hitchcock's VERTIGO. In three years Hitchcok would release PSYCHO and that would be it for noir. We'd be entering the Slasher era.
Unfortunately, the hysteria simply detracts from the terror of the situation: instead of letting the audience provide their own emotions, we have hysterical cops, and that lessens the effect. Compare that with the calm manner in which Robert Preston chases the seemingly calm Alan Ladd in the 1942 noir -- or its best expression in THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, in which everyone is just doing his job. Even the comedy lull, in which Tina Carver is booked and revealed to have married multiple servicemen for their pay, doesn't work when you notice that one of the goggling drunks observing the activity is Fred Kelsey, perpetual dumb cop, unable to prevent this breakdown in society.
Veteran DP John Seitz does provide some interesting visuals -- indeed, the whole production looks to be a gloss on THIS GUN FOR HIRE, on which he was also the director of photography. But this is 1956 and the noir cycle is near the end. The crazies who commit crimes at this point don't do them for Nazi Germany or profit, any more, but because they are crazy. The genre is on its last legs and already changing into something different with pieces like Clouzot's DIABOLIQUE and Hitchcock's VERTIGO. In three years Hitchcok would release PSYCHO and that would be it for noir. We'd be entering the Slasher era.