The Street with No Name (1948)

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Saw this the other night on Movies-TV Film Noir Saturday Night. I read somewhere long ago that legendary director Marty Scorsese was sickly as a child and spent many days at the matinée in his native Brooklyn watching films. I could easily imagine him sitting in a darkened theater around 13 or 14 yrs old and being transfixed by this movie. It reminds me of "The Departed" with all the inside mob and cop snitching, replacing Richard Widmark in the Jack Nicholson role. Excellent caper film.

Film Noir, which has become an almost religious term, allegorically harbored fearful and reactionary attitudes towards women's liberation, radical politics, and the public sphere in general. It implied that post- war American society was morally bankrupt and that the subjects of such a society were doomed to a collective punishment for their lawlessness, for being "led astray" from the traditional "morality" of the patriarchal order. It is thus a fatalistic and thus metaphysical world view. The crime film genre, of which this film is a fine example, those films dealing with the process of the pursuit and capture of criminals by law enforcement, was ironically more progressive and materialistic. Crime was not so much demonized as presented as a byproduct of capitalism, one that law enforcement had to contain. The process of such containment is not romanticized- it is grimy and often boring. But the system works well enough to reproduce itself. "

Semi-sequel to "The House On 92nd. Street" stars Lloyd Nolan, reprising his role of FBI Inspector George Briggs. With WWII now over, he has turned his attentions to organized crime, which has seen an unfortunate resurgence. He recruits FBI agent Gene Cordell to infiltrate the gang of Alec Stiles(played by Richard Widmark) which is suspected in a number of robberies and murders. Gene gathers information on forthcoming robberies, but it turns out the department has a mole, since Stiles was warned off a heist, putting Gene's life in danger, and jeopardizing the whole operation. Effective film with Widmark and Nolan the standouts, even if Nolan isn't used as much as before, and as it turned out, didn't receive a third film. A shame.

***SPOILERS*** Back on the screen after busting a Nazi spy ring FBI Inspector George Briggs, Llyod Noland, is now on the hunt for a crime ring in Center City that's using other peoples identities to commit their many violent crimes. Rolling or robbing unsuspecting men or transients in the skid row section of town of their drivers licenses and social security cards these no good rats rob banks and fancy night clubs in some cases gunning down innocent people and then dropping their identity cards thus implicating them in crimes that they didn't commit!It's when the gang robbed a local bank and gunned down the bank's security guard that they made the biggest mistake in their lives by having the FBI, in that bank robbery is a federal offense, put on the case. Getting FBI Agent Gene Cordell, Mark Stevens, to go undercover as a bum on Center City's skid row the FBI, or his boss Inspt. Briggs, hopes he'd get himself recruited inside the crime ring and finds out not just how it operates but who's in charge of it. The FBI also provides Cordell, now calling himself George Manly, with a phony rap sheet showing how good he is in not only committing major and violent crimes but also being able to get off being convicted in committing them.In no time at all Cordell/Manley's gets himself noticed by the Center City mob boss Alex Stiles (Richard Widmark) who, by having his boys lift his phony social security card, knows a good and successful hood when he sees one. Or better yet his rap sheet provided to Stiles by a member high up in the city's police department. Slowly gaining his boss-Stiles-confidence as an effective and loyal hood Manley also starts to get the goods or evidence on Stiles and his gang in a number of violent crimes that they committed all over Center City that can put them away for life; and in Stiles case in the electric chair. The big problem for Manley/Cordell is that if he's ever caught by or exposed, as an FBI Agent, by Stiles' gang he'll end up being their latest murder victim!***SPOILERS*** Nowhere as good at the earlier FBI movie, also staring Llyod Noland as Inspector George Briggs, "The House on 92nd Street" the film "Street With no Name" has the FBI now involved with just garden verity American criminals who, unlike the Nazis and Soviets, are anything but a threat to the nations existent or even national security. The most interesting thing in the movie is that the involvement of local police, never the FBI, corruption that's by far more effective for the Stiles Mob then anything else in the film. With the mobbed up police officials, or official, actively aiding the Stiles Mob in their recruitment of local hoodlums into their ranks the Stiles Mob wouldn't have been as effective as it was in committing and getting away with its many crimes in the movie! It's in uncovering the mole in the Center City Police Department that all the efforts of the FBI together with undercover FBI Agent Cordell and his back up man Cy Gordon, John MaIntire, who ended up almost getting knifed to death by one of Stiles hoods the knife wielding psycho Shivvy played by Donald Buka, paid off!***MAJOR SPOILER*** The one thing that bothered me about the film is just how unprofessional the local police and possibly even the FBI agent acted in the movie's final sequence. In them not even bothering to arrest and apprehend the bad guys but mindlessly gunning them down, when they were in no way a threat to them, like a bunch of Dirty Harry's who shoot first and asked questions later. It was as if the police & FBI just wanted to save the state and Federal Government the both money and trouble of trying them!