Forsaken Films

Reviews and critiques of movies from off the beaten path.

6.19.2006

The Narrow Margin (1952)

B-budget film noir in the 1940s and 50s usually entailed feeble attempts to live up to their A counterparts, or were interesting yet uneven forays into the experimental realm of expressionism and Freudian psychological art. The Narrow Margin stands head and shoulders above its contemporaries as a B noir that gets everything right.

The story revolves around the widow of a late great gangster (Marie Windsor), slated to testify at a trial and reveal the names of several of her husband's cohorts. Naturally, a large crime syndicate wants the list, and they're willing to kill if bargaining proves futile. The bulk of the film's action takes place on a train as the widow, under the protection of Sergeant Walter Brown (Charles McGraw), travels in order to testify. Nothing is quite as it seems, and Brown finds himself deeper than he had anticipated.

There is no music in the film (except for some tinny jazz heard over a phonograph), which makes the title sequence more eerie than most, and doesn't date the film as much as many others of its day. It also preserves a documentary-like aesthetic throughout the movie. The script is tight and doesn't over-sentimentalize, except for the slightly dated police-force heroics of Brown. Even so, the preaching is kept to a minimum, and never impedes the momentum of the story. There are no lulls; every scene reveals a new twist or brings forth a new plot point. Besides, at 71 minutes, the film hardly has time to stall.

The film's economy, expert pacing, and innovative use of the camera testify to its achievement as an above-average B-level film noir. All who were involved went on to greater things, most notably director Richard Fleischer who directed films such as the sci-fi effects film Fantastic Voyage and the U.S.A. sequences in WWII behemoth Tora! Tora! Tora!.

1 Comments:

At 3:27 PM, Blogger Erin said...

I'd like to check this film out if I can find it anywhere

 

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