He Walked by Night (1948) [Film Noir] [Thriller]

Posted on by womo



On a Los Angeles street, Officer Hollis, a patrolman on his way home from work, stops a man he suspects of being a burglar and is shot and mortally wounded. The minor clues lead nowhere. Two police detectives, Sergeants Marty Brennan (Brady) and Chuck Jones (Cardwell), are assigned to catch the killer, Roy Morgan (Basehart), a brilliant mystery man with no known criminal past, who is hiding in a Hollywood bungalow and listening to police calls on his custom radio in an attempt to avoid capture. His only relationship is with his little dog.

Roy consigns burgled electronic equipment to Paul Reeves (Whit Bissell), and on his fifth sale is nearly caught when he shows up to collect on his property. Reeves tells police that the suspect is a mystery man named Roy Martin. The case crosses the paths of Brennan and Jones, who stake out Reeves’ office to arrest and question Roy. He suspects a trap, however, and in a brief shootout shoots and paralyzes Jones. Jones wounds Roy, who performs surgery on himself to remove the bullet and avoid going to a hospital, where his gunshot wound would be reported to the police.
With his knowledge of police procedures, Roy changes his modus operandi and becomes an armed robber. During one robbery he fires his semi-automatic pistol, and the police recover the ejected casing. Lee (Jack Webb), a forensics specialist, matches the ejector marks on the casing to those recovered in the killing of Officer Rawlins and the wounding of Sgt. Jones, connecting all three shootings to one suspect.

Captain Breen (Roy Roberts) uses this break to gather all of the witnesses to the robberies. They assist Lee in building a composite photo of the killer. Reeves then identifies Roy from the composite. However, Roy hides in Reeves’ car and attempts to intimidate him into revealing details of the police investigation. He barely eludes a stakeout of Reeves’ house.
Because the police do not realize that Roy has inside knowledge of their work, the case goes nowhere. Breen takes Brennan off the case in an attempt to shake him up. Jones convinces his partner to stop viewing the case personally and to use his head.

Plodding, methodical follow-up by Brennan, using the composite photograph, results in information that Roy, whose actual name is Roy Morgan, worked for a local police department as a civilian radio dispatcher before being drafted into the Army. Brennan tracks him down through post office mail carriers and disguises himself as a milkman to get a close look at Morgan and his apartment.

The police surround and raid the apartment that night, but Morgan, forewarned by the barking of his dog, escapes through the attic and uses the Los Angeles sewer system as a means of escape. The film continues with a dragnet and chase through the sewers. Roy is finally cornered by the police in a passage blocked by the wheel of a police car. As the police shoot tear gas at Roy, he staggers and attempts to fire at them. He is then shot down and killed. The final scene is notable for its resemblance to the final scene in The Third Man in which Orson Welles is chased through the sewers of Vienna. No known connection between the films has been established.

—

Directed by Alfred L. Werker and Anthony Mann, produced by Bryan Foy and Robert Kane, story by Crane Wilbur, screenplay by John C. Higgins and Crane Wilbur, starring Richard Basehart as Roy Martin/Roy Morgan, Scott Brady as Sgt. Marty Brennan, Roy Roberts as Captain Breen, Whit Bissell as Paul Reeves an electronics dealer, James Cardwell as Sgt. Chuck Jones and Jack Webb as Lee.

—

Source: “He Walked by Night” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 26 August 2013. Web. 26 August 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Walked_By_Night.

source

20 Replies to “He Walked by Night (1948) [Film Noir] [Thriller]”

  2. What a great movie. LA is one strange place.
    Great to see Jack Webb get his teeth into the Detective work and lifetime career of it on Radio and Cinema. Loved this one too.
    Thank You

  3. "… found himself in a squad car, its sirens screaming as it brought him to the detective bureau."
    This is the voiceover as we watch police cars pulling up to the detective bureau–with not a single siren heard. Nice and quiet. As it should be. Why would they have sirens on while bringing suspects in?
    Oh, but yeah, I'm enjoying the story! I just like to nitpick.

  8. This remarkable 1948 film from Eagle-Lion, the American branch of J. Arthur Rank’s English company, is usually credited to the competent but otherwise undistinguished studio director, Alfred L. Welker, but we also know that the much more inspired Anthony Mann also worked on it. We do not know how much Mann did or did not do. Perhaps if anyone is to be credited with the spectacular look of this semi-documentary post-war film, shot on the streets of Los Angeles and realistically on studio sets, it is the brilliant Hungarian-born cameraman John Alton, famous now for one of the very first books on cinematography, “Painting with Light,” and for his Oscar winning color photography for the dance sequence in Minnelli’s “An American in Paris.” Alton, who could light a gigantic MGM sound stage in Technicolor, was also the man who had the courage to use the lightweight lighting equipment which had come up after the war rather than standard cumbersome studio lighting. There are many setups and locations in this film, and as the film had only a moderate budget, Alton must have worked spontaneously and fast. His low-angle compositions and B&W noir lighting are always inventive, never arty nor intrusive. Ironically, Jack Webb, who here appears as a police scientist, was inspired by the realistic script, underplayed acting, and documentary photographic approach to create the series “Dragnet.” Richard Basehart is thoroughly convincing as the loner killer, as are a slew of character actors, among them Whit Bissell and Roy Roberts, all talking and behaving like human beings for once rather than Actors.

  9. This is a quite good police/noir film by a director who was around in the silent era. But I see the very talented Anthony Mann took over directing this film at some point. Not being acquainted with Werker's other films, I couldn't say how much is Werker and how much is Mann. I do know Mann's work and he was one of America's most talented directors. That last scene in the sewers is extremely well done.

  14. Absolutely stupid and not realistic movie. Every smart and intellectual thief like this guy will try to avoid any murders especially police officer. There was no reason to kill in the first time that poor police guy. He didn't see anything. And after that instead of quit his house immediately this "stupid" thief started to make robbery everywhere.

    Cannot believe that bullshit was made in Hollywood …

  16. It's hard to believe that the "master" criminal, who was so meticulous and careful in his criminal planning, did utterly stupid things like going to the houses even though he knew the cops were there. Also, if this guy was such a master criminal then why was he engaged in such petty, low-paying crimes?

  18. Good movie except the killer used a .38, then a .45, but the shell casings Jack Webb examined were a .380. And why would shell casings be left after firing a .38? It's a revolver, they don't eject. Sorry if I'm picky.

Leave a Reply