Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

Note des utilisateurs:

7.7/10   

Réalisateur:

Otto Preminger

Writers:

Ben Hecht (screenplay)
Victor Trivas (adaptation) ...

Release Date:

7 juillet 1950 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Drame

Plot:

Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon wants to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. But Dixon's vicious nature will get the better of him.

Plot Keywords:

Taxi Driver | Police Detective | New York City | Cover Up | Racketeer

Avis des utilisateurs:

First rate film noir; make that a superb movie.

Ensemble

Dana Andrews	...	Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon (16th Precinct)
Gene Tierney	...	Morgan Taylor(Paine)
Gary Merrill	...	Tommy Scalise
Bert Freed	...	Det. Sgt. Paul Klein (Dixon's partner)
Tom Tully	...	Jiggs Taylor, Morgan's Father
Karl Malden	...	Det. Lt. Thomas (16th Precinct Detectives commander)
Ruth Donnelly	...	Martha, Owner of Martha's Cafe
Craig Stevens	...	Ken Paine

Autre(s) titre(s):

Mark Dixon, détective (France) [fr]

Durée:

95 min

Pays:

USA

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Noir et Blanc

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Son:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Classification:

Germany:12 | UK:12 | USA:Approved (MPAA rating: certificate #14458) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | West Germany:12

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Anecdotes:

Robert F. Simon's film debut.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When the car Dixon is riding in pulls onto (and off) the garage elevator on the way to Scalise's hide-out, the camera shakes violently for a few seconds.

Guillemet:

Morgan Taylor: It's a wonderful day. No job. Everybody against me. My poor dad sitting in a cell... and it's a wonderful day. Isn't that amazing?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in A Trip to Swadades (2008)

First rate film noir; make that a superb movie.

Elegance and class are not always the first words that come to mind when folks (at least folks who might do such a thing) sit around and talk about film noir.

Yet some of the best films of the genre, "Out of the Past," "The Killers," "In A Lonely Place," "Night and the City," manage a level of sleek sophistication that elevates them beyond a moody catch phrase and its connotations of foreboding shadows, fedoras, and femme-fatales.

"Where the Sidewalk Ends," a fairly difficult to find film -- the only copy in perhaps the best stocked video store in Manhattan was a rough bootleg from the AMC cable channel -- belongs in a category with these classics.

From the moment the black cloud of opening credits pass, a curtain is drawing around rogue loner detective Marc Dixon's crumbling world, and as the moments pass, it inches ever closer, threatening suffocation.

Sure, he's that familiar "cop with a dark past", but Dana Andrews gives Dixon a bleak stare and troubled intensity that makes you as uncomfortable as he seems. And yeah, he's been smacking around suspects for too long, and the newly promoted chief (Karl Malden, in a typically robust and commanding outing) is warning him "for the last time."

Yet Dixon hates these thugs too much to stop now. And boy didn't they had have it coming?

"Hoods, dusters, mugs, gutter nickel-rats" he spits when that tough nut of a boss demotes him and rolls out all of the complaints the bureau has been receiving about Dixon's right hook. The advice is for him to cool off for his own good. But instead he takes matters into his own hands.

And what a world of trouble he finds when he relies on his instincts, and falls back on a nature that may or may not have been passed down from a generation before.

Right away he's in deep with the cops, the syndicate, his own partner. Dixon's questionable involvement in a murder "investigation" threatens his job, makes him wonder whether he is simply as base as those he has sworn to bring in. Like Bogart in "Lonely Place," can he "escape what he is?"

When he has nowhere else to turn, he discovers that he has virtually doomed his unexpected relationship with a seraphic beauty (the marvelous Gene Tierney) who seems as if she can turn his barren bachelor's existence into something worth coming home to.

The pacing of this superb film is taut and gripping. The group of writers that contributed to the production polished the script to a high gloss -- the dialogue is snappy without disintegrating into dated parody fodder, passionate without becoming melodramatic or sappy.

And all of this top-notch direction and acting isn't too slick or buffed to loosen the film's emotional hold. Gene Tierney's angelic, soft-focus beauty is used to great effect. She shows herself to be an actress of considerable range, and her gentle, kind nature is as boundless here as is her psychosis in "Leave Her to Heaven." The scenes between Tierney and Andrews's Dixon grow more intense and touching the closer he seems to self-destruction.

Near the end of his rope, cut, bruised, and exhausted Dixon summarizes his lot: "Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too,.." he says. "One false move and you're in over your head."

Perhaps what makes this film so totally compelling is the sense that things could go wildly wrong for almost anyone -- especially for someone who is trying so hard to do right -- with one slight shift in the wind, one wrong decision or punch, or, most frighteningly, due to factors you have no control over. Noir has always reflected the darkest fears, brought them to the surface. "Where the Sidewalk Ends" does so in a realistic fashion.

(One nit-pick of an aside: This otherwise sterling film has a glaringly poor dub of a blonde model that wouldn't seem out of place on Mystery Science Theater. How very odd.)

But Noir fans -- heck, ANY movie fans -- who haven't seen this one are in for a terrific treat.