Directed by Russell Rouse (The Well, Wicked Woman, New York Confidential, House of Numbers).
Written by Clarence Greene and Russell Rouse. Cinematography by Sam Leavitt (The Man With The Golden Arm, Crime In The Streets, The Wild Party, Anatomy Of A Murder, The Crimson Kimono, Cape Fear, Brainstorm).
Music by Herschel Burke Gilbert, Sound by Mac Dalgleish, Gene Fowler Jr., Robert Oberbeck, Robert B. Warwick Jr.
The film stars Ray Milland as Allan Fields, Martin Gabel as Mr. Bleek (Soviet agent/case officer), Harry Bronson as Harris (FBI agent), Rita Vale as Miss Philips (Soviet agent/courier), Rex O'Malley as Beal (Soviet agent/courier), Rita Gam as the Girl (MacGuffin), John McKutcheon as Dr. Linstrum (Fields' superior/document custodian), and Joe Conlin as Walters..png) |
| Ray Milland as Allan Fields |
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| Martin Gabel as Mr. Bleek |
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| Rita Gam as the Girl |
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| Harry Bronson as Harris |
This film is completely devoid of dialogue. All we hear are the ambient and diegetic sounds around Allen Fields and the complementary score by Herschel Burke Gilbert. It's a great example of visual / audio storytelling.
<spoilers>
Its basically Milland as Allen Fields reacting to the various situations that he finds himself in as a result of his decision to photo nuclear equations to hand off to, (since its 1952) probably the Soviets. All we surmise it that they are spies that he is dealing with.
<end spoilers>
Story
A title sequence with the US Capitol in the b.g., ends with a shadowy figure eclipsing the dome of the capital building.
That cuts to a ringing phone in a darkened apartment. We pan from the phone across the walls to a bedroom doorway.
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The phone rings three times and stops. We enter the bedroom and see the feet of a man on the bed. The phone is loudly ringing again. As we pan to the head of the bed we expect to see a dead man. And at first, when we finally pan up his legs to his face, the man is starring eyes open into the dark, that is what we assume, until we see him move. The phone stops ringing again after three rings.
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So This guy is sitting in the dark ignoring the phone. After the phone stops ringing he sighs, rolls over on his side, and turns on a lamp. He is Allen Fields. He grabs a loose tar bar sitting on the night table and ignites it with a book of matches. The ash tray beside it looks like a glass porcupine. Allan takes a couple of puffs and then adds another quill.
He gets up straightens his tie, grabs an overcoat and heads out into streets of Georgetown, Washington D.C.
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We watch as he walks through the darkened neighborhood. Eventually a man appears a few hundred feet in front of Allen. He lights a cigarette. Crumples up the empty pack, and drops it at his feet.
He walks off. All the while Allen approaches towards us.
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When Allen gets to the crumpled cigarette pack he stops, deliberately picks it up, slips it into his pocket and walks off. When Allen gets back to his apartment, he throws the crumpled pack on his desk. he treats the crumpled pack as if its a piece of kryptonite. He walks around it. Steals glances at it. Acts repelled by it. While he's in the midst of this he looks at a plaque with an award given to him. Here is where you find out he is a nuclear physicist.
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He finally approaches the desk and removes, what looks like a piece of foil from the pack. Allen pulls out glasses and reads what is on the foil. He crumples it up and sticks it again in his pocket. He walks over to his couch. Sits. Pulls out the foil again. Glances at it and then with another match lights it on fire. He drops in into another ashtray.
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He finally approaches the desk and removes, what looks like a piece of foil fron the pack. Allen pulls out glasses and reads what is on the foil. He crumples it up and sticks it again in his pocket. He walks over to his couch. Sits. Pulls out the foil again. Glances at it and then with another match lights it on fire. He drops in into another ashtray.
The next morning Allen leaves his house and hops into his 1942 Chevrolet Special De Luxe and drives to work at The United State Atomic Energy Commission.
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In his lab Allen takes a file lays it on his desk, opens the blinds on his window to let in more light, and begins to photograph the pages one after another with a small spy camera. The pages are marked secret.
When done he removes the small roll of film, places it in a small pillbox. It kind of looks like the small tin boxes that hold Altoid mints. This he wraps with white medical tape to seal it shut. When done it goes into his pants pocket and the file back into a safe.
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When he is about to leave the office he pick up his phone and dials a number. It rings three times and then he hangs up. He redials and again lets it ring three times before hanging up. Ok so this is obviously how he makes contact and gets contacted in turn.
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We cut to Allen entering the Library Of Congress. He enters the reading room and looks around. We again see his contact man the same one we saw on the street. "Mr. Bleek."
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He's already in place sitting at a table. He watches as Allen walks past him to a bookshelf. Allen stops and pulls out a volume that's taller than the books around it. He places the pill box with the film on the shelf then replaces the volume and walks off . Mr. Bleek gets up and retrieves the pill box.
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We cut away from the library and we now follow Mr.|Bleek. He's probably at Washington National Airport. he goes into a phone booth leaves the pillbox in the change slot.
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A man with a suitcase arrives outside the booth. Mr. Bleek gets up and the new man takes his place. This man goes through the motions of dialing but he's really fishing the pill box out of the change slot and into his pocket. He gets out and walks to a "passengers only" stairway and drops down out of sight.
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| Lockheed Constellation |
We cut to a Lockheed Constellation flying over lower Manhattan. A domestic flight it's most likely heading for LaGuardia airport.
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Back with our phone booth courier on Broadway and 34th Street. He meets another contact, Miss Phillips, at the nylon counter at Macys. Her purse is open beside her and the courier drops the pill box into the purse. We cut to Miss Phillips walking along a Mid-town park where she passes the pillbox to a man sitting on a park bench.
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Cut again this time to Idlewild Airport this time where the bench man watches as another courier boards an international TWA Lockheed Constellation flight for Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, and Cairo.
Now as a kid I flew on a Lockheed Constellation to Europe in the late 1950s from Idlewild. None of these flights were non stop. We flew from Idlewild to Gander, Newfoundland, gassed up. Flew from Gander to Shannon, Ireland, gassed up again and then flew to Orly, Paris. The plane actually had curtains on the windows, I was impressed.
This flight in the film probably did the same only deviating at Shannon to Lisbon first then Madrid, Orly and Cairo.
We get another cigarette pack message to Allen this time he needs to film a file out of his supervisors office. He almost gets caught when he accidently leaves his spy camera on the supervisors desk, and the supervisor unexpectedly comes back into his office grabbing a book he wanted to take home.
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This time the film drop is in a catalog file draw. We get another sequence of the pill box going again to New York but it all goes Noirsville when one of the couriers gets run over by a 1950 Chevrolet Styleline Special at the edge of Central Park.
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| Rita Vale as Miss Philips |
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| Rex O'Malley as Beal |
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The cops find the pill box, see what's on the film and of course notify the FBI.
Noirsville
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This is a good Visual Noir, that tells its story through the facial expressions and body language of Milland, to a musical accompaniment emphasizing the obvious in case you don't pick up on what is trying to be conveyed.
We never find out the why of the story. What tipped Allen to the dark side? Money, relatives in jeopardy, blackmail.
All the supporting actors serve their purpose in the narrative. The one and only standout is Rita Gam whose every fraction of screen time just oozes sex appeal. She's like a loaded gun, a Femme Fatale waiting to happen.
If Allen wasn't so traumatized by the expose of his traitorous behavior and paying attention to the signals she is broadcasting we may have had a very different film. Its fun to speculate the wild possibilities.
We get some great location shots of Georgetown and what amounts to archival footage of a Times Square, that I remember, that is now long gone. There's even a shot of the Camel Cigarette Man blowing smoke rings. We also get some subway sequences. 7-8/10
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Great shots, innovative Noir.
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