Where the Sidewalk Ends (Fox Film Noir)

Buy This Item Where the Sidewalk Ends (Fox Film Noir) by 20th Century Fox  Available from Amazon  $7.99  on 8-28-2008     Otto Preminger made four films noirs at Fox, all terrific. If we set aside the peerless <i>Laura</i> as more psychological mystery-romance than noir, there's plenty of evidence for judging <i>Where the Sidewalk Ends</i> the best of the lot (the other two being <i>Fallen Angel</i>, a study in small-town perversity, and <i>Whirlpool</i>, a delicious exercise in creepy psychology, slippery mise-en-scène, and daringly complicated point-of-view). It's a hard-edged tale of a borderline-vicious New York police detective, Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews), with tortuous personal reasons for overzealousness in going after the bad guys. Much of the film unreels in one night, when the murder of a high-roller from out of town precipitates a string of events that lead to Dixon's becoming an accidental killer. Preminger's direction is taut, forceful, and fluid, especially when Dixon sets about creating an alibi for himself. Unfortunately, an innocent man gets implicated, with Dixon looking on, and the guilty cop's moral and psychological torment increases with each turn of the screw.<p> Tightly scripted by Ben Hecht, Preminger's film lacks the anguished poetry of Nicholas Ray's <i>On Dangerous Ground</i>, another 1950 noir centered on a cop (Robert Ryan) addicted to ultraviolence, but its grip is relentless. Preminger had a shrewd instinct for tapping a certain thuggish strain in Andrews, whose performance here is arguably his best. They're reunited with Gene Tierney, as a woman caught in the sidewash of sordid goings-on, and <i>Laura</i> cameraman Joseph La Shelle, whose work has a luster beyond the accustomed semidocumentary look of Fox noirs. Gary Merrill, usually a bland nice-guy, relishes the chance to play nasty as Dixon's gangland bête noire Tommy Scalise, a homoerotic villain in the Tommy Udo vein with a menthol inhaler as fetish object. <i>--Richard T. Jameson</I> Reader Reviews I probably never gave Dana Andrews enough credit, but apparently Preminger did. This is actually a very good story about a good guy who just can't seem to convince himself that good guys finish last. An extremely good movie for the time. Andrews in this and "Fallen Angel" are not to be missed. And Linda Darnell in 'Angel': where's a time machine when you need it!

Where the Sidewalk Ends (Fox Film Noir) Available from Amazon Price: $7.99 Updated on 8-28-2008.

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