The Street with No Name Reviews

This is another in the spate of semidocumentary crime films which appeared in the late 1940s (HOUSE ON 92ND STREET, NAKED CITY, etc.). Stevens is an undercover FBI agent who investigates after a woman is killed in the holdup of a nightclub. The chief suspect in the case is arrested, bailed out, and murdered, and the FBI soon learns that he was framed. Stevens is given the identity of a drifter and sent to hang out at a gym where he meets Widmark, a promoter. Later, when his wallet is stolen and then recovered at the scene of a robbery, he is arrested and taken to jail but is soon out on bail posted by Widmark. He is inducted into Widmark's gang and learns the plans for their next holdup. Stevens gets word of the plan to police chief Begley, who sets a trap, but an informant within the department tips off the gang leader, and the crime is cancelled. Widmark suspects that his wife, who has threatened to blow the whistle, has tipped off the cops, so he savagely beats her. Stevens takes a bullet from Widmark's Luger and sends it to the police to be checked against the bullet used in the nightclub murder. When Widmark finds fingerprints on his gun, his informant, commissioner Smith, runs them down, and identifies them as those of an FBI agent. Widmark quickly figures out that Stevens is the man and prepares to kill him during their next holdup. Before he can murder the agent, though, Begley and the police burst in and gun him down, having discovered that Smith is the leak and learned of the job. The film is exciting and tense, with good performances and a tight, well-planned script. Widmark had made a great impression as the psychotic Tommy Udo in KISS OF DEATH the year before, and this film was designed chiefly to capitalize on that success. His character in this picture is just as disturbed, but without the twitches and other affectations of the earlier role. Here his character is paranoid about drafts from windows, airborne germs, and fresh air. He constantly uses an inhaler while he talks. However, he is smart, organizing his gang of thieves on "scientific lines." The scene in which he beats his wife, Lawrence, was exceptionally brutal and had to be cut to get by the censor. Seven years later the same story was transposed to occupied Japan and directed by Samuel Fuller as HOUSE OF BAMBOO.