Night Shift (2020)

If noir is about ambiguity, ambivalence, and personal anguish, Night Shift certainly qualifies. The film addresses global issues on a small scale, through the interactions of its four main characters. Asomidin Tohirov is a prisoner who is scheduled for deportation to his home country of Tajikistan. His background is never fully explained, but it appears that he is an illegal immigrant seeking asylum in France who has overstayed some predetermined time limit. Three police officers—Virginie, Erik, and Aristide—are given the task of taking Tohirov to the airport. Title cards identify each officer by first name only, and viewers are given brief glimpses into their personal and work lives.

(This article about Night Shift contains almost all the spoilers.)

Virginie starts her day with her husband and her eighteen-month-old baby boy. Before reporting for work, Virginie goes to an appointment to schedule an abortion. When she starts her workday, she is in the locker room changing into her uniform, and as she does so, her demeanor seems to shift: She is taking on her role of an officer. Virginie goes to a break room, where one of the officers there, Aristide, calls her Miss Norway. She continues through the room to a corridor. Another officer, Erik, asks her to accompany him: He is taking a battered woman back to her home to retrieve her belongings.

En route to the woman’s home, the woman starts crying in the backseat of the police car. Virginie tries to reassure her. At the battered woman’s home, the husband harasses Virginie, and Erik restrains him. The wife starts crying again and asks the officers to leave. Virginie writes her incident report back at the police station. Aristide interrupts her to ask her out to lunch at their usual kebab place, but she refuses.

The next police task is a public brawl between several civilians, which the police, including Virginie and Aristide, break up. After many of the civilians are arrested, restrained, and on their way to police vans, Virginie tells Aristide that she is pregnant with his child. In a flashback, viewers see how the two (Virginie and Aristide) first became attracted to one another during a night out with other police officers.

Back again at the police station, Hervé, one of the commanding officers, asks for volunteers to escort a prisoner to the airport for deportation. The so-called Escort Crew is unavailable because its members are fighting a prison fire. Erik agrees to go when asked. Virginie volunteers before being asked. Aristide joins at the last minute when he sees Virginie is going; he had originally refused the job.

When Erik’s day starts, viewers learn that he is married and does not have any children. His wife tells him that she would take things out on them, too, if they had had any. They argue; their marriage is troubled. Viewers see the police activity of the morning from Erik’s perspective, including the battered wife and the call for volunteers to escort the prisoner to the airport.

Viewers also see Erik’s interactions with Aristide because they are partners. They answer a call to help a woman and her child, but there is nothing that they can do because the child is dead. The woman claims that she never meant to hurt him and that she is not a bad mother.

Aristide’s day starts with a zoom call to his grandmother, who is hospitalized in his home country of Senegal. On his way to work, Aristide thinks of the night he and Virginie first were attracted to one another. His flashback continues with more details of that night out.

In this way, viewers learn about the events of the day from the perspective of each of the three police officers. Viewers learn about Tohirov and the police officers through their interactions and their conversations, and sometimes through flashbacks. Tohirov does not talk because he doesn’t understand or speak French. Everything viewers learn about him is through the three police officers: Virginie, Erik, and Aristide.

Virginie did not realize that their assignment involves taking a foreigner to the airport for deportation. She learns this from an offhand comment by Aristide as he drives the police transport van. She has another flashback showing the beginning of her affair with Aristide. They arrive at the prison to find it is the one on fire. As Virginie leads Tohirov out of the prison to the transport vehicle, a woman tries to stop them. She says that they appealed Tohirov’s case to the European Court for Human Rights, that the court is ruling soon, and that Tohirov will be killed on his return to his home country of Tajikistan.

Virginie knows nothing about the prisoner’s circumstances, but she sits in the backseat with him and has his sealed dossier on her lap. The seal on the dossier is minimal, so she opens it and reads it, and she is alarmed by what she reads. It seems the woman who tried to stop her was right. In addition, Tohirov suffered physical abuse and torture. Virginie reads the details to the others, and she becomes increasingly concerned about the task they have set out to do. When the prisoner starts crying, she takes off his handcuffs. Erik is infuriated by her attitude and her actions.

Virginie is the character who makes the argument that they should help the prisoner rather than simply follow the rules of proper police conduct. In a flashback during this sequence, Aristide and Virginie are in bed, and he talks of his grandmother, who raised him. Virginie’s flashbacks seem to be a way for her to reconcile what she knows about Aristide, what she found attractive about him, and his current attitude toward their prisoner. She seems to be the only one touched by the prisoner’s circumstances.

Aristide and Virginie stop to get a bite to eat and talk. Erik and Tohirov wait in the transport vehicle. While they are eating, Aristide begins to see Virginie’s point of view and understand her concerns. In the transport vehicle, Erik talks to Tohirov. He lays out the reasons why they should do their jobs, but Virginie and Aristide are not there to hear him, and Tohirov doesn’t understand. Erik doesn’t know why Tohirov is being sent back to Tajikistan, but he also doesn’t know what Tohirov is doing in France and his isn’t entirely convinced about his reasons for coming to the country in the first place. He acknowledges out loud that Tohirov could be a terrorist. Erik ends by saying, “I don’t understand. I understand nothing.” Aristide eventually comes around to Virginie’s way of thinking. Erik is still infuriated, but he finally accedes to their wishes and agrees not to stand in their way. He has given the reasons why they should follow police procedure, in contrast to Virginie.

They leave the prisoner, without handcuffs, alone in the transport vehicle in the woods, but he won’t leave the vehicle. Even when they push him out, Tohirov won’t leave. He probably doesn’t understand what they are trying to do, doesn’t understand what they want for him, and/or doesn’t know where to go. Erik says that Tohirov probably thinks they will try to kill him.

By now the tension is rising among the three police officers. They argue, and Aristide and Erik challenge one another. Virginie convinces everyone to get back into the vehicle, and they continue to the airport. No one is happy about the task, but they continue anyway. Erik is relieved to be getting it over with and staying out of trouble. He doesn’t want any marks on his service record because it is clean. They continue to the airport in silence and drop off the prisoner when they arrive.

After Tohirov is frisked by two new police officers, he is taken to the airport transport bus. Before the officers can load him in, he puts up a fight and starts screaming. Virginie, Erik, and Aristide watch Tohirov in still silence. As the three police officers start the drive out of the airport, Virginie starts to feel sick. Aristide asks her if she is alright, and she tells him she needs some air. In a few seconds, she sees, in her mind’s eye, Tohirov being dragged into the airport vehicle, and she starts running back to the terminal.

Aristide drives after her, then follows her on foot into the terminal and onto the plane. They talk first to the pilot, then tell the officers escorting Tohirov that he is a dangerous man. They demand to take the prisoner back. The escorting officers protest, but the pilot doesn’t want trouble in the air. He agrees to let the prisoner return to the ground.

During this scene, the camera focuses on Tohirov. He doesn’t understand at first. Everyone’s voices become muted to demonstrate his lack of understanding. But when Virginie makes eye contact with him, he understands finally that they are trying to help him.

On their way back to the station, Aristide thanks Erik for calming the customs officials down, but Erik is worried about the consequences of their actions. They all agree, including Erik, to include in their report that the prisoner was uncooperative, but Erik still fears the consequences. He has twenty years of service and not one blemish on his record—until now. Virginie, Erik, and Aristide have bought more time for Tohirov, but there is no guarantee that the European Court for Human Rights will make its decision in time to avoid another attempt to deport Tohirov. And I can’t help but think that calling him “dangerous” and “uncooperative” will hurt his chances.

The three officers continue with their respective days. Erik visits the seashore, where he looks happy for the first time in the film. Aristide goes to the clinic with Virginie. They walk out and down the street together, hand in hand. All three of them have no resolution to the day’s activities. They do not know what will become of Tohirov, who is presented as one of the most important decisions they faced that day. But they are peace with themselves, and that is a day that ends well.

Night Shift is called Police in France. It is based on a French novel, also called Police, by Hugo Boris. I cannot understand why the title was changed for English-language audiences. The three main characters, the police officers, are not really working a night shift; they have volunteered for an extra assignment, with overtime, that lasts until the assignment is finished. There is no time limit or shift work involved. I wish the distributors stuck with the original title: It would have made more sense.

But this is hardly a major complaint. The film takes its time explaining the stories of the officers and their prisoner. We know what the officers are facing at home and on the job, and we understand that the prisoner is really caught in an unfortunate situation created mostly by government red tape, at least as far as the film’s plot is concerned, and not by anything that he has done. Viewers are drawn into the story via the four main characters (the police officers and their prisoner), and they see the anguish, anger, and fear that each character experiences to varying degrees. Even though it takes place in France, the story could stand in for all the immigration stories taking place across the United States today, in 2025.

What I especially enjoyed about the film was its lack of a tidy ending. It resolves something about each of the four strands of the plot. Viewers learn that Tohirov is taken off the plane and returned to French custody, but we never learn if the European Court for Human Rights rules in time to have any effect on the man’s future. His impossible dilemma is resolved, but maybe only for a day or two, as Erik rightly points out. Still, it’s a relief to know that Virginie accomplished what she set out to do after she opened Tohirov’s file in the transport vehicle. Everything else is left to fate, which is one of the hallmarks of noir, old and new.

February 23, 2020 (Berlin), September 2, 2020 (France, Belgium), release dates  •  Directed by Anne Fontaine  •  Screenplay by Claire Barré  •  Based on the novel Police by Hugo Boris  •  Music by Guillaume Clément  •  Edited by Fabrice Rounaud  •  Cinematography by Yves Angelo

Omar Sy as Aristide  •  Virginie Efira as Virginie  •  Grégory Gadebois as Erik  •  Payman Maadi as Asomidin Tohirov  •  Aurore Broutin as the psychologist  •  Thierry Levaret as Hervé  •  Cécile Rebboah as the social worker  •  Anne-Pascale Clairembourg as Martine  •  Cédric Vieira as Virginie’s husband  •  Tadrina Hocking as the gynecologist  •  Elisa Lasowski as Sonia  •  Emmanuel Barrouyer as the abusive husband

Distributed by StudioCanal, Athena Film  •  Produced by F Comme Film, Ciné@, StudioCanal, France 2 Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, Korokoro, Scope Pictures

Appointment with Danger (1950)

I have seen Alan Ladd in several films now, and he has become one of my noir favorites. He can play both sides of the law with an equal amount of cynicism. His role in Appointment with Danger is Al Goddard, a U.S. postal inspector, and he is definitely on the right side of the law, and he is definitely very cynical.

The film opens in a semidocumentary style, with different interior and exterior shots of the largest post office building in the country. Viewers also see postal workers at work. A voice-over narrator explains the working of the post office in general, then points out that postal inspectors are members of the oldest police force in the United States. Appointment with Danger is the story of one postal inspector, and it starts on a rainy summer night in Gary, Indiana.

This narrated opening is a bit bland, I must confess. But once the action starts—with Postal Inspector Harry Gruber already dead in Gary, Indiana, and his body being dumped in an alley in nearby La Porte—the switch in tone is dramatic. The dramatic tension is accentuated because a nun, Sister Augustine, stops at one end of the alley where two men are trying to hide Gruber’s body. She struggles to open her umbrella in the pouring rain. One of the men, George Soderquist, arrives to help her, and she asks him about the man slumped against their car. Soderquist explains that the man is very drunk. But Sister Augustine doesn’t buy the story. She very soon reports the incident to a nearby police officer on a motorcycle, who chases after the fleeing car. Harry Gruber’s body is eventually found in the alley, and Sister Augustine is now a key witness.

Al Goddard is newly arrived in La Porte from Chicago, Illinois. His boss, Maury Ahearn, is a new arrival as well. Goddard’s reputation has preceded him; everyone in La Porte already knows that he is hard and unfeeling. The secretary in the La Porter branch office tells the investigators who arrive with Gruber’s effects that Goddard has ordered “a small boy with mustard” for lunch. When they bring the evidence into Ahearn’s office, Goddard implies that they are not doing their jobs well enough or they would have found the nun, their key witness, by now.

Al Goddard wants to get the job done and that’s all. Maury Ahearn warns him about antagonizing others on the case. Ahearn has to leave town, and on the way to the airport, he and Al Goddard have a conversation about the case and Goddard’s general attitude. Here’s an excerpt:

• Maury Ahearn: “You’ve been chasing hoodlums for so long, you don’t know how to treat ordinary people. Warm up, will ya?

• Al Goddard: “Sure, I’ll fall in love for ya.”

• Maury Ahearn: “I don’t think you could because you don’t know what a love affair is.”

• Al Goddard: “It’s what goes on between a man and a .45 pistol that won’t jam.”

To say that Goddard is all business would be an understatement.

Goddard is efficient and knows what he is doing. He takes a taxi to investigate known locations behind the killing of Harry Gruber, and he arrives by chance at the railway stop in La Porte. He takes the train from La Porte to Fort Wayne Junction. At Fort Wayne Junction, he questions two railway workers, one of whom saw two nuns board a bus. Goddard takes a bus from Fort Wayne Junction to Belle Isle, where he stops in front of a convent, church, and school. There, naturally, he finds Sister Augustine.

(This article about Appointment with Danger contains some spoilers.)

Part of the charm of the Appointment with Danger is Al Goddard’s character transformation: He starts to care about the welfare of Sister Augustine. Their banter back and forth throughout the film is humorous. But Goddard’s gets off to a rocky start with her, just as he manages to do with everyone he meets. When he first meets her and asks about her whereabouts the night of the murder, Goddard makes the usual bad first impression:

• Sister Augustine: “I got off the train to get Sister Paula some medicine. She wasn’t feeling so well.”

• Al Goddard: “Neither was the guy in the alley. He was a dead government agent by the name of Harry Gruber.”

• Sister Augustine: “Oh. Did he have a family?”

• Al Goddard: “What’s the difference, Sister? He’s just as dead either way.”

• Sister Augustine: “Not quite, Mr. Goddard.”

Al Goddard and Maury Ahearn work with a local homicide detective Dave Goodman. They all wonder about the following: Why did two gunsels kill Gruber? Why did they dump his body out of town instead of leaving town, as most murderers do? What is it about La Porte that is keeping the criminals in town? Maybe something to do with the postal service and something that Gruber was investigating? They eventually narrow their search to three individuals: Earl Boettiger, who is the ring leader of a big heist planned for La Porte; Joe Regas, who would have been just as happy to have gotten rid of Sister Augustine from the start; and George Soderquist, who helped Sister Augustine with her umbrella. Al Goddard insinuates himself into the gang to learn their plans, and the chase is on.

Jan Sterling plays Dodie, the femme fatale and the girlfriend of the criminal ringleader and mastermind, Earl Boettiger. But her role of femme fatale is a bit unusual. She isn’t completely loyal to Boettiger. When she overhears Goddard warning the police and his boss about a change in the heist plans, she doesn’t bother to tell Boettiger anything about it. She confronts Goddard after his phone conversation, and she tells him that she won’t rat on Boettiger because he has always treated her well. When Goddard points out that she could be considered an accessory to a crime. She decides to do her civic duty; she reports the crime to a government agent: Goddard! She doesn’t care that he already knows all about it. She tells Goddard that she hopes Boettiger survives and kills him. Then she leaves to start packing, get out of town, and save herself.

Jan Sterling’s character isn’t the only unusual feature of this noir. Now that I have seen several of Alan Ladd’s films noir, many of them are unusual in this respect: He rarely has a romantic lead, unless his costar is Veronica Lake, that is. In Appointment with Danger, the lead opposite Al Goddard is a nun, hardly a romantic prospect. In This Gun for Hire (1941), Veronica Lake plays Ellen Graham, a woman who helps Alan Ladd’s character, Philip Raven, Ladd’s breakout film noir role. But she is not his costar, nor does she play his girlfriend in their first film together (it’s the one exception to the Veronica Lake as Alan Ladd’s costar and romantic lead). Alan Ladd gets fourth billing in This Gun for Hire, but the film launched him to stardom. He does get the girl, that is, any character played by Veronica Lake, at least after This Gun for Hire. In the next two films noir that they starred in together, The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946), the romantic subplot involves their respective characters.

And then there is Chicago Deadline (1949), in which Alan Ladd plays Ed Adams, a newspaper reporter investigating the death of a young woman, Rosita Jean d’Ur, who is found alone in a shabby hotel room. Donna Reed plays Rosita Jean d’Ur, who is already dead at the start of the film. Ed Adams and viewers get to know her only through flashbacks.

There is one detail about Appointment with Danger that does not stand the test of time at all, and that is its portrayal of the nuns. Sister Augustine and Mother Ambrose are portrayed as simple innocents who are horrified by violence and who are protective of children. This part of the film I found hard to swallow, coming as I do from a 2025 perspective. I kept thinking what a farce this portrayal of nuns is, now that we know both nuns and priests have been accused, some even convicted, of abuse against children around the world. In 1950, a nun in a traditional habit was assumed to be a good person, one even with exceptional moral character. But this just kept getting in the way of my enjoying the film as much as I did the first time I saw it many years ago. The fact that I spent some years under the tutelage of nuns has colored my perspective, I admit. But I think many people today would find the portrayal of the nuns as wide-eyed innocents a little tough to take.

April 7, 1950 (United Kingdom), May 9, 1951 (United States), release dates  •  Directed by Lewis Allen  •  Screenplay by Richard L. Breen, Warren Duff  •  Music by Victor Young  •  Edited by Le Roy Stone  •  Cinematography by John F. Seitz

Alan Ladd as Al Goddard  •  Phyllis Calvert as Sister Augustine  •  Paul Stewart as Earl Boettiger  •  Jan Sterling as Dodie  •  Jack Webb as Joe Regas  •  Stacy Harris as Paul Ferrar  •  Harry Morgan as George Soderquist (credited as Henry Morgan)  •  David Wolfe as David Goodman, homicide detective in Gary, Indiana  •  Dan Riss as Maury Ahearn, chief postal inspector  •  Harry Antrim as Postmaster Taylor  •  Geraldine Wall as Mother Ambrose  •  George J. Lewis as Leo Cronin  •  Paul Lees as Gene Gunner

Distributed by Paramount Pictures  •  Produced by Paramount Pictures

I Love Trouble (1948)

And I just love the title of this film noir. I Love Trouble is one of those films noir with so many twists and turns that you have to follow the plot closely and, as is typical with so many films noir, it helps to see the film more than once. It also has plenty of snappy dialogue, which adds to the fun. And to make things even better, I Love Trouble has plenty of roles for female actors, with not one femme fatale among them.

Just writing that last sentence is something of a spoiler. And just so you know: This article has more spoilers ahead.

I Love Trouble is in the public domain. You can watch it for free at the Internet Archive by clicking here. There are a few versions of the film at the Internet Archive, but this one was the best print that I could find there.

Private investigator Stuart G. Bailey has been hired by Ralph Johnson to learn more about Johnson’s wife. Johnson is a prominent local citizen in Los Angeles (L.A.); he is the estate planning commissioner and chair of the civic council. He has been receiving notes hinting at his wife’s dark past and threatening blackmail. Bailey has gotten on his bad side from the start because he is following Mrs. Johnson (aka Jane Breeger) in L.A., not digging around in her past in Portland, Oregon, as he was instructed to do. Bailey’s work in L.A. has paid off, however. He asks Johnson if he knows about his wife’s account at a bank in Westwood. Johnson knows nothing about it. He decides to retain Bailey’s services after all, but he still wants him to investigate his wife’s past in Portland.

In Portland, Bailey discovers that Jane Breeger’s former home address is now a shipping yard. The address for her first job, at a club called Keller’s Carousel and owned by a man named Keller, was closed by the police years ago. Bailey keeps looking for Keller and finds an illegal club in what appears to be an abandoned building He meets someone there named Reno, who just so happens to be working for Keller. Keller tells Bailey that Jane Breeger left Portland in 1941 with a comic named Buster Buffin. When Bailey leaves Keller’s club and reaches the street outside, someone attempts to run him down—twice. When that doesn’t work, someone knocks him out. Bailey believes Reno is responsible so, before he leaves Portland, Bailey returns to Keller’s club, punches Reno twice, and knocks him out. This antagonism between the two men will flare up again during Bailey’s investigation back in L.A.

Bailey’s next stop is Buster Buffin’s Buffet in Venice, California. (The film is yet another one from the period that shows the beach studded with oil derricks, back when California was a major oil producer, back before the environmental movement took shape.) Buster Buffin now owns a café on the beach in Venice, and he tells Bailey that Jane Breeger once worked under the name of Janie Joy at Club Zorro in Long Beach.

Bailey was followed on his way to Buffin’s Buffet, and he stops his car to confront the person following him. The person just drives away, but Bailey is followed repeatedly throughout his investigation, and this particular person and his associates, including Reno, catch up with Bailey eventually.

Mrs. Ralph Johnson has a very complicated past that adds to the very complicated plot of I Love Trouble. She has changed her name, moved from Portland to L.A. (and from a past that seems to have been obliterated by new construction more than once), and lied to her husband about when exactly she left Portland. Why all the lies? And why are so many people so hesitant to talk about Janie Joy? Why does her sister, Gretchen Breeger, fail to recognize the one photo that Stuart Bailey has of Jane Breeger? Gretchen Breeger moved to L.A. to work as a model, and she has changed her name to Norma Shannon. But this naturally draws more suspicion, at least at first, on the part of Bailey. Stuart Bailey falls for Norma Shannon, but he confirms everything that she tells him before acting on his feelings.

Why is Keller, Jane Breeger’s former employer, so interested in finding her? He goes to great lengths to learn what Bailey knows, setting Reno and two men named Sharpy and Herb after Bailey. They kidnap him and try to beat information out of him. The police, Lieutenant Quint in particular, start to believe that Bailey isn’t very forthcoming with information about the murders, first Buster Buffin’s, then Mrs. Ralph Johnson’s, both of which occur only after he has started his investigation. Someone tries to frame Bailey for the murders, and Lieutenant Quint is happy to take Bailey into custody. Although viewers know that Bailey is innocent, police suspicion complicates his life and the plot even further.

Stuart G. Bailey is a competent private investigator. He solves the mystery and even gets the girl in the end. I enjoyed the fact that his secretary, Hazel Bixby (played by Glenda Farrell), is just as competent at coming to Bailey’s rescue on more than one occasion. Bixby keeps the office tidy and functioning smoothly, and she can trade wisecracks with Bailey, especially when clients get huffy. And she can handle a gun and herself out on the streets. Stuart Bailey owes some of his success to Bixby.

The character Stuart G. Bailey likes the ladies, and he meets many in this film. I hear that Franchot Tone, the actor who plays him in I Love Trouble, might have been similar. He was married four times to several actresses, including Joan Crawford, and his private life may have been more scandalous that Stuart Bailey’s. For more information about Tone and the film’s production, click on the following links:

◊ Wikipedia—Franchot Tone—Personal Life: The entire entry at Wikipedia gives a lot more information about the actor, but the focus on his personal life is fascinating. Many fans of film noir may already know about his troubles with the actor Tom Neal.

◊ Noir Alley—I Love Trouble (1948) Intro, September 25, 2022: As he always does, Eddie Muller gives lots of great information about the film’s production; the screenwriter, Roy Huggins; and Franchot Tone. But I do suspect that he overplays Franchot Tone’s relationships with women just a bit.

I Love Trouble is a lot of fun, and I cannot recommend it enough. Watching it more than once to make sure I followed the plot was a pleasure. So many film noir regulars have parts in this film that the fun also comes from watching the supporting cast. Glenda Farrell, Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, John Ireland, Raymond Burr, Steven Geray, and Tom Powers all give wonderful performances. It really is too bad that Franchot Tone didn’t make more of this type of film.

January 15, 1948, release date  •  Directed by S. Sylvan Simon  •  Screenplay by Roy Huggins  •  Based on the novel The Double Take by Roy Huggins  •  Music by George Duning  •  Edited by Al Clark  •  Cinematography by Charles Lawton, Jr.

Franchot Tone as Stuart Bailey  •  Janet Blair as Norma Shannon  •  Janis Carter as Mrs. Alicia Caprillo  •  Adele Jergens as Irene (aka Boots) Nestor  •  Glenda Farrell as Hazel Bixby  •  Steven Geray as Keller  •  Tom Powers as Ralph Johnson  •  Lynn Merrick as Mrs. Johnson  •  John Ireland as Reno  •  Sid Tomack as Buster Buffin  •  Donald Curtis as Martin  •  Eduardo Ciannelli as John Vega Caprillo  •  Robert Barrat as Lieutenant Quint  •  Raymond Burr as Herb  •  Garry Owen as Gus  •  Eddy Marr as Sharpy

Distributed by Columbia Pictures  •  Produced by Cornell Pictures

Guilty Bystander (1950)

Guilty Bystander may be the most noirish film noir I have seen so far. The filmmakers decided to shoot the film on location in New York City, and that decision certainly helped them achieve a gritty verisimilitude, in spite of using actors in the leading roles who were well known in 1950. The griminess felt real, even from the viewer’s seat.

Guilty Bystander is available for free online. Click here to watch it at the Internet Archive. If you would like to watch the film with Spanish subtitles, click here.

But on-location shooting wasn’t the only reason Guilty Bystander is so noirish. The two main characters, Max and Georgia Thursday, are flawed in very noir ways. Max Thursday (played by Zachary Scott) is a disgraced police detective who was suspended from the force because he shot Red Folger after drinking on the job; a newspaper reporter discovered the facts and published them, forcing Max’s boss, Captain Mark Tonetti, to suspend him. Max turns to the bottle to console himself, and it isn’t long before he leaves his marriage to Georgia (played by Fay Emerson) to live in the Riverview Hotel, a flophouse near the Brooklyn Bridge, where he lives and scrapes out a living as its house detective.

(This article about Guilty Bystander contains spoilers.)

All this information is part of Max’s backstory, which viewers learn as the film progresses. The narrative actually begins with Georgia Thursday looking for her husband one evening because she is desperate for help finding their young son Jeff. She arrives at the Riverview Hotel, obviously alarmed at the living conditions. She cannot help herself from wiping her fingers when she touches a banister. Georgia has to rouse her husband from a drunken stupor to convince him to help her. The only clue she has about Jeff’s disappearance is a note in which her brother Fred Mace claims to be going on an errand and taking Jeff with him. They were supposed to be back by dinner, but that was more than twenty-four hours ago.

Max Thursday is not such a dedicated drunkard that he isn’t moved by his wife’s distress and the plight of their son. Neither he nor Georgia seem to care too much about Fred, except that his involvement just makes the alarm they feel even more pronounced. Max may be a disgraced police detective, but he jumps into the investigation knowing that he still has the skills and wherewithal to do some good. Both parents can feel some relief knowing that Max is on the case.

But Max isn’t exactly a gentleman. Yes, he loves his wife and son, and he would do anything to protect both of them. But that is actually part of his problem. He is not above telling Angel, one of the leads he is following in his investigation, that he and she should move to Florida and live on the beach for the rest of their lives. To make his act more convincing, he kisses her passionately (enough) while they are on their way to find his brother-in-law. He promises Angel the world because he wants her to lead him to Fred. He will tell her anything as long as he can find Fred and thus his son.

And just in case viewers aren’t convinced that Max Thursday is a heel, he tries to save himself when two thugs show up at the bottom of a staircase by shoving Angel down into them and running up the stairs. By this point, Angel is distraught because she knows she has been taken in by yet another creep. In fact, I was sure that the two thugs would kill her and Max, but no. She runs off shrieking about her close call with death and the betrayal by Max. After all of this, I could still root for Max because I was really rooting for Jeff. Without Max, Jeff could be gone forever, and without his quest for Jeff, Max would be nothing but a corrupt cop who got what he deserved.

And to say that Max is vital to the investigation is not an understatement. The police are on the case, but they do have other priorities, and his wife Georgia does nothing to help, other than showing up at the start of the film and asking Max to get involved. And yet she is not exactly the sweet woman waiting at home for her husband to get his work done. Later in his investigation, when Max returns to her apartment with a gunshot wound in his upper arm, she tends to it expertly enough to extract the bullet.

Max threatens to stop investigating. He cannot even carry a gun anymore since his suspension and so he cannot defend himself. He believes that is how he was wounded in the first place. He knows that he drinks too much and has the shakes, which would affect his aim. When Max feels that he will never find Jeff, Georgia hurls angry statements at him such as “You haven’t gone as far as you can until you’re dead,” “If you haven’t got a gun, go without one,” and “You can’t walk, crawl. But you’re going to bring Jeff back.” Her arguments about Max continuing his investigation have their intended effect: Max is apparently susceptible to a bit of emotional manipulation. Why should Georgia care what happens to Max as long as their son is safe?

Smitty is the proprietor of the Riverview Hotel, where Max lives, and she helps Max with his investigation by providing information. Her position running the flophouse makes her privy to gossip and pertinent information, but she also encourages Max to drink whenever she can. Sometimes he gives in, which adds to the complexity of his investigation and brings him back to the attention of the police and Tonetti, his former boss. Max was the last person to see one of his leads, Doctor Elder, before Elder was found murdered. Max is a strong suspect given his background on the police force and the fact that he accepted Elder’s offer of alcohol when they met. Tonetti wants Max to leave the investigation of his son’s disappearance to the police force, but he lets Max go, his prime suspect in Elder’s murder, for lack of concrete evidence against him.

The search for his son leads Max to a smuggling ring that deals in guns and illegal drugs—and murder. Doctor Elder is his first lead, and the alcohol that the doctor convinces Max to drink tastes a bit like licorice. Audiences in 1950 must have known what Max was referring to when he mentioned the taste of licorice because no other mention is made of this substance, so I did a little research. The alcohol was probably absinthe, and Wikipedia offers a lot of information about it, including bans on its production and consumption. (Click here to read more; scroll down to the subsection called “Bans” if you want that information specifically.) Thus, Max probably guessed right away that Doctor Elder dealt in illegal substances, and 1950 audiences probably would have guessed the same.

The only false note in the film was the ending. Max is suddenly cleaned up and dressed in a suit, and he and Georgia arrive to find Jeff safe and sound, just as Fred Mace had told Max he would be. The happy family walk away down the street together. There is even a moment when the little boy struggles out of Faye Emerson’s arms and reaches his arms up to Zachary Scott to be picked up and held. It’s a charming moment that I think had more to do with the little boy (no credit line for Jeff) and Zachary Scott than it did with Jeff and Max Thursday. In fact, I wondered if the little boy was related to Scott or possibly his own son. But “charming” is hardly a way to describe Guilty Bystander overall. It’s the ending that everyone wants, to be sure. But it comes with no transition, no explanation about Max’s seemingly sudden transformation. The ending felt tacked on, or maybe any intervening scenes had been cut for the sake of brevity.

Guilty Bystander has only recently been restored and made available for viewing. I found this information courtesy of Eddie Muller and his discussion of the film for the program Noir Alley at Turner Classic Movie (TCM). Click here for the YouTube version of Muller’s introduction to the film, which includes lots of information about the writers of the novel that the film is based on and the film’s producers. Muller’s outro (click here) provides more information about the restoration of this film.

In spite of all his flaws, Max is determined to find his son. And Zachary Scott is perfect in this role. I have always been a fan of Scott’s, and I always look forward to seeing a film with Scott in any role, lead or supporting. His performance in Guilty Bystander does not disappoint. It’s a great story, too. The happy ending may not match the rest of the story, but the rest of the story and Zachary Scott’s performance are the reasons to see Guilty Bystander.

April 20, 1950, release date  •  Directed by Joseph Lerner  •  Screenplay by Don Ettlinger  •  Based on the novel Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller  •  Music by Dimitri Tiomkin  •  Edited by Geraldine Lerner  •  Cinematography by Gerald Hirschfield, Russell Harlan

Zachary Scott as Max Thursday  •  Faye Emerson as Georgia Thursday  •  Mary Boland as Smitty  •  Sam Levene as Captain Mark Tonetti  •  J. Edward Bromberg as Otto Varkas  •  Kay Medford as Angel  •  Jed Prouty as Dr. Elder  •  Harry Landers as Bert  •  Dennis Patrick as Fred Mace, Georgia’s brother  •  Ray Julian as Johnny  •  Elliot Sullivan as Stitch Olivera  •  Garney Wilson as Harvey  •  Donald Novis as Detective Johnson  •  Jesse White as the man in the bar  •  Scott Landers as Shaunessy, the police officer in the jail cell  •  Lester Lonergran as the coroner  •  Lou Herbert as a police detective

Distributed by Film Classics  •  Produced by Edmund L. Dorfmann Productions, Laurel Films, New York Film Associates