Sat 31 Dec 2016
A Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: HE WALKED BY NIGHT (1948).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[11] Comments
HE WALKED BY NIGHT. Eagle-Lion Films, 1948. Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb. Director: Alfred L. Werker, with Anthony Mann (uncredited).
He Walked by Night was one of those movies that I knew existed and had always intended to watch. But for some reason, I never seemed to get around to doing so. Until now, that is. The verdict is mixed. On the one hand, there’s some excellent staging and cinematography — particularly in the last 20 minutes or so — in this true crime-inspired police procedural/film noir.
But the story, as far as it goes, is a particularly thin one, with far less character development than one would hope for in a movie so intently focused on the ways in which a criminal eluded the police for so long.
Richard Basehart portrays Roy Martin (alias Roy Morgan), a loner with a penchant for electronics who commits a crime spree in the greater Los Angeles area in the late 1940s.
Among his crimes is the cold-blooded murder of a LA police officer. It’s up to the LAPD to hunt him down and bring him to justice. Leading the effort is Sgt. Marty Brennan (Scott Brady) who gets some much-needed technical assistance from a police forensics expert (Jack Webb).
You wouldn’t know it from watching the movie, which gives next to no explanation for the crimes depicted on screen, but the backstory to the criminal portrayed by Basehart in He Walked by Night helps shed some light as to his possible motivations in carrying out his reign of burglary, robbery, and murder.
The character of Roy Martin was based on the real life criminal exploits of Erwin “Machine Gun” Walker, a former Glendale, California, police department employee who engaged in a crime spree in LA County in 1945-46. Walker, a Cal Tech drop out who witnessed Japanese atrocities during his service in World War II, was likely traumatized by his combat experiences and the subsequent guilt he felt for surviving an attack that killed many of his fellow soldiers.
Because of this lack of character development, the film ends up being a middling police procedural that, with a little bit of tweaking, could have been a far more formidable crime film. Still, there are enough gritty moments, particularly during the final sequence in which the LAPD hunts down Roy Martin in tunnels under Los Angeles, which should please film noir fans.
December 31st, 2016 at 6:50 pm
Sounds like a film about “Machine Gun” Walker would certainly be a more interesting one.
December 31st, 2016 at 7:22 pm
Can’t agree with you here. For me, this is a noir masterpiece, and a movie that has given consistent pleasure over countless re-watchings.
December 31st, 2016 at 7:42 pm
I’m with Patrick Murtha on this one. Richard Basehart doesn’t need a backstory to hold my attention.
December 31st, 2016 at 9:38 pm
This one works asks for me. It’s more interested in suspense and atmosphere than story.
December 31st, 2016 at 9:58 pm
I’ve heard that Jack Webb’s participation in this film inspired him to create DRAGNET.
December 31st, 2016 at 11:22 pm
Yes. The DRAGNET connection is quite obvious, beginning with the opening narration, which concludes with the phrase “Only the names are changed … to protect the innocent.”
But the aspect of dramatizing a true crime, complete with authentic police procedures, terse dialogue and light chitchat between the officers (“How’s the wife? … Good, glad to hear it.”), all grist for Jack Webb’s mill.
I agree with Jon in thinking more could have been done with filling in the story, but both the cinematography and the lighting are extremely well done. While it’s old hat now, I can imagine that back in 1948, viewers may have been thrilled to see for the first time what standard police procedures looked like, including a very visual group effort to create a sketch of the killer’s face.
I’ve added Anthony Mann in the credits as as an uncredited director of the film, and while I don’t know for sure what his input might have been, I suspect that its very striking noirish qualities were largely due to what he was able to add to the production.
January 1st, 2017 at 1:43 pm
I really enjoy this film, much more so than Dragnet–due mainly to the visual stylishness. I’m also glad that there’s no backstory for Basehart’s formidable sociopath; we’re told all we need to know about him by his actions (his intelligence, his toughness, his self-reliance, and his absolute ruthlessness), and I can’t picture any additional dialogue revelations would have done anything but weaken him, making him seem less like an incalculable creature of the night (remember what backstory did to poor Darth Vader?) The film works beautifully as one of the most gripping examples of the “manhunt” film, and doesn’t need to be a full psychological study.
Also, is there actually any evidence for Mann’s participation in this film–studio memos, cast recollections, etc.? I’ve never seen any; as far as I can tell, the Mann credit is based solely on auteurist speculation–namely, that the film “looks like” a Mann movie, and that Mann was working at Eagle-Lion at the time it was made. The visual resemblance to Mann’s film is more than sufficiently explained by the fact that John Alton, Mann’s cameraman on his other Eagle-Lion and RKO films, did the cinematography for He Walked by Night. In fact, I’d argue that the photography auteurs refer to as the Mann look is really the Alton look; Mann’s later Westerns (which I greatly enjoy) and historical epics don’t have the same visual look as his black-and-white crime films.
January 1st, 2017 at 3:19 pm
The primary source of information about Mann’s involvement seems to be Max Alvarez’s book, The Crime Films of Anthony Mann. University Press of Mississippi, 2014. I don’t have the book myself, but snippets of it are available through Google. Some of the sections I’ve been able to access seem to be speculation, but one eye witness who was able to be interviewed was screenwriter and dialogue director Stewart Stern, who confirmed Mann’s involvement with at least one scene (the sewer sequence).
January 1st, 2017 at 5:35 pm
I believe the characterization is intentionally left sketchy; it conveys the way Basehart/Martin sees others.
January 1st, 2017 at 7:08 pm
You’re right, Dan. They could have added more to Basehart’s character, but they chose not to. That aspect of it didn’t work for me, but there was quite a bit to the film that I was happy with. I’m sure I’ll watch it again sometime.
January 8th, 2019 at 6:58 am
I like this movie’s extreme abstraction. Roy Martin starts out as the hunter, because it’s his nature. Then the cops set out to hunt him, because that’s what cops do. The cops win because they have the numbers. Personal motivations or questions of right and wrong don’t come into it.
If we knew Roy’s motivations he would become an actual person and the movie would become just another routine crime drama instead of a fascinating exercise in minimalist abstraction.