The Street with No Name

The Street with No Name straddles the clash-prone genres of noir and FBI procedural better than most films of its ilk. Even so, the docu-drama segments play like unintentional near-parody. In the opening story-establishing scenes, the Hoover-run apparatus springs capably into action. Murder bullets are couriered to the Bureau’s DC crime lab and matched through a “data base” that consists of a filing cabinet with labeled drawers. A suspect is identified and apprehended within hours. One neat, if slightly far-fetched trick involves matching dried paint on the suspect’s coat to a building girder to corroborate an alibi.

Later, at a cinematic precursor to Quantico, an agent is picked out of a litter of recruits like an eager puppy from the pound. His qualifications for undercover work appear to consist solely of being a crack shot and possessing the ability to differentiate friend from foe. Mark Stevens gives a fair turn as the undercover agent Gene Cordell, investing the rather thankless blank slate character with some much needed personality. Cordell takes to his assignment with enthusiasm and resourcefulness, but isn’t infallible as a third reel gaffe on his part leads to potentially dire consequences. His means of infiltrating the criminal gang are at once simple and novel and provide panoramic ingress into the chaotic bustle of a vintage boxing gym as well as some welcome levity.

Director William Keighley deftly negotiates the studio mandate of a spotless and efficient Bureau with grittier doses of reality and bad guy who isn’t a fish in a barrel. Richard Widmark’s Alec Stiles has his own bag of tricks including a clever method of screening new members for his gang that involves carefully orchestrated frame jobs and subsequent access to police records. Stiles is the slow boil sort, cool on the exterior with an explosive temper simmering underneath. Widmark also gives him the slightly unsightly and unsettling habit of sniffing nose drops. His signature menace is present, but bridled much of time, making the periodic explosions of violence all the more effective, as when he guns down a woman in the back in the film’s first few minutes. Camaraderie with his gang comes out of necessity and his ruthlessness remains governed by a calculating intelligence. Stiles personifies a new sort of atomic age gangster, one “building an organization along scientific lines”.

Joe MacDonald’s cinematography is gorgeously gritty, particularly so in the location night scenes. Even with some print wear in evidence, his compositions of shadow and light and sharply contrastive angles give the film a look that easily qualifies it as noir despite the more staid procedural leanings of the plot. The Skid Row of the fictional Center City comes alive through the camera and the cast is similarly stocked with vibrant character actor talent including: Ed Begley, John McIntire and Howard Smith. McIntire in particular distinguishes himself as Cy Gordon, Cordell’s perpetually grave handler. In radio communications with headquarters he even goes so far as to dampen his voice to a somber whisper even though there’s no one else within ear shot to hear him. The script is saturated with period vernacular, but not overblown. One line stands out amongst the hardboiled banter: “The nose, hit him in the nose, it’ll splatter all over his kisser.” It’s a humorously savage sentiment manifested more explicitly in a surprisingly bullet-riddled finale.