The Street with No Name
                                                                                                      
Director: William Keighley
Year: 1948
Rating: 6.5
This is a follow-up to The House on 92nd Street (1945) except this time the FBI are not going after Commies, this time it is Gangsterism as J. Edgar Hoover wrote in a memo. Like The House it is very much a recruiting tool for the FBI as they come off without a blemish. In 1948 the FBI were still heroes in the public consciousness. The dirt that came out about them was still years away but they were busy collecting data on everyone. It is also similar to The House in style and pacing. Semi-documentary with a narration pulling us along like a mother dragging her son to the bathroom. Lloyd Nolan returns as the same character, Inspector Briggs, the perfect G-Man as he moves his men around like a chess game to catch the gangsters.



Center City is having a crime wave with a few corpses to show for it. No one knows who is behind the gang of men who rob a bank and a nightclub. Briggs finds Cordell (Mark Stevens) training at Quantico and sticks him in Center City to infiltrate the gang. Move around, play pool, eat in crummy diners, sleep in a hotel that only cockroaches would be comfortable in. In a terrific scene directed by William Keighley, he goes into the local gym for boxing training with boxers and spectators milling about and matches going on in the two rings. He brings attention to himself by telling a boxer what he is doing wrong. "Let's see if you are more than mouth" and he goes in and holds his own.



The owner Alec Stiles greets him with a smile that a Cheshire Cat would be envious of. Charming and evil, part grin, part smirk as only Richard Widmark could manage. This was only his second film but his first was the classic Kiss of Death as the psychotic Tommy Udo. In that one he pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs; here as he plays the piano, he tells his slinky blonde girlfriend (Barbara Lawrence), "If you open that window again, I'll throw you out of it" and a few slaps follow later on. A real sweetheart. He runs a gang of about eight thugs - 'I'll do all the thinking here" - and brings Cordell into it after checking his bonafides with a weasel in the police department. But the FBI has him covered. But when a job goes bad, Stiles knows there is a rat in the house. Solid film but Widmark takes it up a notch in every scene he is in. Already clearly a star on the rise but already being typecast as a villain which he played many times in his career. He was just so good at it.