Great oppressive, night time cinematography from Nick Musuraca plus one of John Garfield's finest performances as a vet with PTSD which, along with femme fatales and corrupt cops, is a a key ingredient in noir, lift this film above the mediocrity line. However, Warren Duff's screenplay from Dorothy B. Hughes' novel is simply too dependent on plot for it to be a classic of the genre. In other words, it's too much of a Who Done It? Rather than a What Are The People Doing It Like? Type of movie. And whenever a film is over plotted, as this one is, what tends to suffer most is characterization. And so you end up with standardized villains like Walter Slezak's paint by the numbers, oleaginous Nazi that he's done a thousand times before and Maureen O'Hara's gorgeous hole in the screen where an alluring woman of mystery should be. Patricia Morison does a good job of portraying a radical chic bad girl but, as per usual, there is not enough of this fine actress onscreen. My favorite character beyond Garfield is actually John Miljan's cynical detective, a throwaway role that this obscure supporting actor somehow manages to make memorable. Give it a B minus.
Review of The Fallen Sparrow
