Where the Sidewalk Ends (Preminger, 1950): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 5.50pm
This film is part of the Gene Tierney season at BFI Southbank and also screens on April 27th. Full details here.
Time Out review:
A
weatherbeaten Dana Andrews gives one of his finest performances as Detective
Mark Dixon, a belligerent cop whose father was a crook and whose
roughhouse tactics appal his bosses. He's a good man at heart, but the
fates are against him and his behaviour becomes closer and closer to
that of the father he abhorred. Mobster Merrill is always on hand to
taunt him about his background. His plight becomes yet more desperate
when he accidentally kills a murder suspect and then falls in love with
the widow (Gene Tierney). Otto Preminger's superior noir boasts hardboiled and sardonic dialogue, courtesy of Ben Hecht,
but also a surprising strain of pathos as Dixon fights against his own
nature. Brutal, fatalistic, but desperate for redemption, he's just the
kind of cop James Ellroy would write about so well a generation later.
Geoffrey Macnab
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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