The Street with No Name (1948)

By John Chard

Central City Confidential. The Street With No Name is directed by William Keighley and adapted to screenplay by Samuel Engel and Harry Kleiner. It Stars Mark Stevens, Richard Widmark, Lloyd Nolan, Barbara Lawrence and Ed Begley. Music is by Lionel Newman and cinematography by Joseph MacDonald. Undercover FBI agent Gene Cordell (Stevens) infiltrates a crime gang led by Alec Stiles (Widmark). Produced in the good old semi-documentary style that suits cops and robbers noir pieces, The Street With No Name is all about showing how great the FBI is – and how dangerous their jobs are. Tight with its procedurals and investigative science, its thematic elements have high interest factors. Whilst the thrills come with the peril Cordell faces as he runs the risk of being unmasked by suspicious gang members and, naturally, there’s a stoolie in the mix as well. Stevens makes Cordell as the all American hero type, the kind the FBI want up front and personal as the face of its organisation. Widmark, fresh from prime psycho duties in Kiss of Death, again brings the nasty, only here with sly rational villainy in abundance. The polar opposites work well, while the characterisations of not only the principal players, but others as well, has that delightful ambiguity and personal quirky traits that would often drive film noir on. Joseph MacDonald (The Dark Corner/ Call Northside 777) cloaks it in suitably noirish photography, ensuring the fictional Central City comes off as a place in danger of being corruptible to the core. Dialogue is hard enough to land a punch, the script thus managing to offset Stiles being under written, and even though the plot is thin, cast are good enough to keep it as above average noir fare for discernible types. 7/10 Footnote: It would be reimaged as House of Bamboo in 1955 with Samuel Fuller directing (MacDonald on photography duty there as well). Interesting to compare the two from a noir perspective.