Crime Street presents He Walked by Night (1948)

Director - Alfred Werker
 

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Plot
Commentary
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

A brainy burglar turns cop killer and the Los Angeles police force takes advantage of its new scientific/forensic techniques to track him down.

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Commentary

Getting Ahead of Ourselves

He Walked By Night predates C.S.I. and the other procedurals by over 50 years. But it's far more than just a precursor to routine television of the 21st century.

Told in a semi-documentary form with an all seeing but objective narrator, He Walked By Night is sort of a film-noir meets Dragnet. And in fact, Jack Webb, who plays a supporting role in the film, would lift many of the elements as the basis for creating Dragnet a few years later.

Besides the script and the low key dialogue and acting, there are two major reasons for this reaching beyond its B-film origins. Anthony Mann and John Alton.

The Invisible Mann

Though nominally directed by Arnold Wesker, a Hollywood hack director whose career began in 1917, He Walked By Night was actually the work of an uncredited Anthony Mann.

Born Emil Anton Bundmann in San Diego, Mann's directorial journey took him from a successful Broadway career, then on to supervising screen tests for David O. Selznick, before he became an innovative director of crime dramas in the 40s and psychological westerns in the 50s. Mann had an artful eye for action that consistently raised routine genre films to high quality cinema.

Mann is probably best known for the series of hard-boiled westerns he did with James Stewart. Among them are Bend of the River, The Man From Laramie and Winchester '73.

Anthony Mann died in 1967 in Berlin while shooting a spy movie with Lawrence Harvey.

Painting with Light

Though John Alton was a master color cinematographer (he won an Oscar® for American in Paris), his black and white work ranks him among the immortals.

Alton's signature style was deep focus high contrast B&W cinematography combined with extreme, bizarre camera angles. When you see his name on a film you can be sure you will be seeing misty Los Angeles nights with lamp posts burning out of the darkness, figures framed in silhouettes in doorways and the blackest blacks and whitest whites on celluloid. He Walked By Night is a textbook example of his style

And speaking of textbooks, his textbook Painting with Light (1949) remains a classic study of cinematography and is readily available today.

What to Watch For

• Richard Basehart operating on himself (almost totally in extreme close-up of his face).
• The archetypal film noir "look" in almost every frame of the film, especially the exterior night locations.
• The climactic chase through the sewers (predating the far more famous Third Man).

Strange Quote to Listen For

"The work of the police, like that of woman, is never done."

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

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Cast

Production Credits

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For more on...

John Alton and Painting with Light
The Works of Anthony Mann

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