Alias Nick Beal (1949)

Alias Nick Beal is one of those films that seems to belong to many genres. Nick Beal is the name that the devil uses for his work to corrupt Joseph Foster, a district attorney with political ambitions. Nick Beal often appears out of nowhere, and he often knows what other people are thinking and what they are going to say. The film has some obvious religious themes, and it sometimes borders on the supernatural. But as I have said before, I have never been a big fan of categories.

Nick Beal’s voice-over narration about Joseph Foster starts the narrative. A still shot of Foster on the steps of the governor’s mansion, looking very unhappy and apprehensive, is repeated later in the film as part of the action, after Foster has been elected governor. Viewers have learned by the time the shot is repeated why Foster looks so unhappy. Most of Joseph Foster’s story is told in flashback— one of the defining features of noir—after the voice-over introduction by Nick Beal.

Before he gets to the governor’s mansion, Joseph Foster is the district attorney, and he is prosecuting a case against a criminal called Hanson, one of Foster’s old legal adversaries. Foster has enough evidence this time to convict Hanson and start cleaning up corruption. But Hanson and his gang discover Foster’s plan, and Hanson pulls some strings to have the evidence burned, even though he is being held in prison.

Frank Faulkner, an associate of Hanson’s gambling and numbers syndicate, visits Foster in his office and threatens him if he doesn’t stop his prosecution of Hanson and his associates. In return for Foster’s compliance, Faulkner offers him the option of his backing in the race for governor, but Foster refuses. He certainly comes across as incorruptible so far. And his image is enhanced when viewers learn that Foster and Reverend Thomas Garfield run a boys’ club to keep juvenile offenders from repeating their criminal behavior and to help young boys from starting a life of crime.

But it’s in the office of the boys’ club where trouble starts for Foster, with a seemingly innocent turn of phrase that normally goes unnoticed. Joseph Foster talks about the loss of evidence in his case against Hanson with Reverend Garfield and his wife Martha Foster in the office at the boys’ club. Foster concludes with, “You know, I’d give my soul to nail him [Hanson].” A young boy suddenly appears with a note from a stranger: “If you want to nail Hanson, drop around to the China Coast at eight tonight.”

Joseph Foster meets Nick Beal at the China Coast Café, a rundown dive on the docks near San Francisco Bay. Beal takes Foster to the Highwater Cannery, where he breaks the lock on the office door. Inside, Beal produces accounting books with all the pages signed by Hanson. Beal disappears, but first he gives Foster the idea of taking the accounting books. Foster can’t resist the temptation and leaves with the books.

(This article about Alias Nick Beal contains spoilers.)

Nick Beal appears and disappears unexpectedly, which gives the film a touch of the supernatural. He’s also a human representation of the devil, which naturally introduces religious themes to the story. George Macready, as the Reverend Thomas Garfield, has a very important role to play in Joseph Foster’s salvation. He and Martha Foster don’t care for Nick Beal, and they try to convince Joseph Foster to stay clear of him. The very noir feature of political corruption is told in something of a morality play, which Nick Beal even admits to near the end of the film.

Donna Allen (played by Audrey Totter) is introduced inside the China Coast Café. The implication is that she is a sex worker, and in her first scene, she gets into a fistfight with another woman and is thrown out of the bar. Outside, in the fog, she meets Nick Beal, who offers her a luxury apartment (complete with surrealist murals painted right on the walls) and a new wardrobe. All Donna Allen has to do in return is volunteer at the boys’ club run by Joseph Foster and Reverend Garfield. When Nick Beal wheedles Joseph Foster into running for governor on his terms, Donna Allen is ready to work on his campaign.

Working with Nick Beal comes with complications, in spite of all his promises to be helping. For instance, Henry T. Finch, the bookkeeper at the Highwater Cannery, wants to talk to Joseph Foster and shows up at his home one night. Finch kept Hanson’s books on the side, and he is now on the run because the people running the numbers syndicate in town think that he stole Hanson’s books and gave them to Foster. He insists that he burned the books and that Foster must have had copies, not the originals. Finch steals one of Foster’s pipes out of a set that he keeps in his library and then delivers it to Nick Beal at the China Coast Café. It seems Nick Beal is perfectly happy working with anyone who is willing to make a deal with the devil. When Finch is found murdered, the pipe found in his possession implicates Joseph Foster.

The shot of Foster on the steps of the governor’s mansion that opened the film is repeated after he has been elected governor. He doesn’t look very happy, however, when a newspaper photographer asks him to stop for the cameras. By now, he is painfully aware of all that he is lost in his quest for the governor’s seat and allowing Nick Beal to take over his life. The changes in Foster haven’t gone unnoticed: Reverend Garfield has a talk with him about his estrangement from his wife Martha, Nick Beal’s hold over him, and rumors about his relationship with Donna Allen. With the reverend’s gentle persuasion, Foster begins to fight back against the temptations that he has given into. He doesn’t have to do it alone. Reverend Garfield and Martha Foster are with him to offer help when he doubts himself and feels too powerless to continue.

It was a very pleasant surprise to see George Macready as a reverend. I’m so used to seeing him play villains. For instance, he plays the Nazi Ballin Mundson in the film Gilda alongside Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth. Macready is entirely convincing, however, as a religious person trying to save Joseph Foster from himself.

The DVD I watched came with audio commentary by Eddie Muller, film historian and founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation. Muller makes a very good case for calling Alias Nick Beal a noir. I’ve always been a big fan of Miller’s audio commentaries, and this one is no exception. Muller mentions that he hadn’t done a commentary in three or four years and that he had more or less come out of retirement to record this one for Alias Nick Beal because it is one of his favorite films. In fact, his enthusiasm gave me a much greater appreciation for the film in general.

As always, Muller’s commentary is full of interesting bits of information about the film itself, the context of its production, and the principal cast and crew. I heartily recommend it. I should listen to it again because I really am still on the fence about calling Alias Nick Beal a film noir. According to Muller, in noir, and for Joseph Foster, it’s a godless world, and prayers go unanswered. But my favorite observation of Muller’s is that Alias Nick Beal ends like a vampire film because Beal can’t touch the bible that Reverend Garfield places on top of the contract between Beal and Joseph Foster. Maybe the film really is a candidate for several different genres, including vampire film, that I had never even considered!

March 4, 1949, release date  •  Directed by John Farrow  •  Screenplay by Jonathan Latimer  •  Based on a story by Mindret Lord  •  Music by Franz Waxman  •  Edited by Eda Warren  •  Cinematography by Lionel Lindon

Ray Milland as Nick Beal   •  Audrey Totter as Donna Allen  •  Thomas Mitchell as Joseph Foster  •  George Macready as Reverend Thomas Garfield  •  Geraldine Wall as Martha Foster  •  Fred Clark as Frankie Faulkner  •  Henry O’Neill as Judge Ben Hobbs  •  Darryl Hickman as Larry Price  •  Nestor Paiva as Karl, the bartender  •  King Donovan as Peter Wolfe  •  Douglas Spencer as Henry T. Finch  •  Charles Evans as Paul Norton, candidate for lieutenant governor  •  Ernö Verebes as Mr. Cox  •  Arlene Jenkins as Aileen, the maid at the Fosters  •  Pepito Pérez as the poster man  •  Joey Ray as Tommy Ray  •  Frank Mayo as a committee man  •  Lester Dorr as a commercial fisherman

Distributed by Paramount Pictures  •  Produced by Paramount Pictures