Destino de fuego

A offbeat film noir from 1949 starring Glenn Ford & Nina Foch. Ford is a treasury agent hot on the heels of gathering information to convict a criminal through unorthodox means (he's building a case for tax evasion). Using dogged tactics to track down the bookmakers who keep the convicts' tabs (& confiscating their ledgers in the process), Ford's men, which include James Whitmore (in his screen debut), are a tight, professional lot but when the main con gets wind of Ford's activities, the usual goons are sent out to put pressure on the powers that be to lay off (even threatening Ford's wife, Foch, in the process). If only Ford can find one guy to testify & finally get the ball rolling in the right direction which proves easier said than done. That becomes the driving force of this story as Ford's tenacity is taken to the breaking point as his search becomes more desperate & dire. Running under 90 minutes, this film plays like an offshoot of the Charles Martin Smith character from The Untouchables (the books guy who figures out Capone can be got for fixing his books) which even though there aren't any gunfights to speak of, the tension is palpable & distinct. Co-starring Leo Penn (father of Sean, Michael & Chris) in a small role.

I'm surprised this noirish crime drama hasn't generated more than 3 reviews. It's not top- notch Joseph Lewis, but it is a good, solid film with several outstanding features. IRS agent Glenn Ford wants to get the goods on crime honcho "The Big Fellow". But to do that he has to get a numbers-cruncher on the inside to talk. Trouble is, candidates keep turning up dead, while wife Nina Foch never sees her man. Understandably, Ford wants to quit for a 9 to 5 job, but will he.

One reason these govn't agent films of the late 40's remain interesting is because of artistic conflict. Big money studios want to extol law enforcement while writers and directors like Lewis and Anthony Mann are drawn to the dark side. Thus, the results often raise more questions than they answer, and remain a real contrast to the Dragnet-type paradigm that emerges in the Cold War 1950's. Note, for example, the dramatic highlight of gunmen chasing down a stoolie on a crowded city street. They have to push their way through the sweaty throngs, yet no one stops to intervene, show any curiosity, call a cop or do anything. No, passers-by just go about their business, letting criminality take its course. Why get involved and risk retaliation from an outfit that the community does business with anyway, especially when they play the numbers or handicap horse races. After all, this is a poor neighborhood and gambling, legal or otherwise, holds the prospect of quick riches. So why get involved.

Of course, the episode might be considered nothing more than an effective contrivance. But in its setting, I think it's more than a contrivance and raises interesting questions about the law and community attitudes. Also, consider the aging desk sergeant (a superbly appropriate John Hamilton). He's on the take because he's got a wife and kids to support, not like the bachelor inspector who "can afford to be upright and honest". Now, whatever the opinion of police unions, an underpaid cop is more vulnerable than one that has some organized leverage over pay-grades. I'm not saying this is a social conscience movie. It's not. I am saying that these noirish crime dramas often contained touchy issues that the old studio- system, especially, had difficulty dealing with.

As an IRS agent, Ford is appropriately professional and humorless; at the same time, I'm wondering where I can sign up for the Nina Foch fan club. No wonder Ford wants more time at home. What she lacks in curves, she makes up for in sheer beauty and I'm definitely smitten. But it's that human oil slick in a thousand dollar suit that steals the movie. As master fixer Edward J. O'Rourke, pudgy Barry Kelley is simply superb. He's so effectively oily, we ought to start pumping right now. Also in a standout role is the little girl Rosa (Joan Lazer), unfortunately her only movie credit. Anyway, it's a fairly fast-paced film, with a good, tense ending, and a suitably ironical last line. My only complaint is "The Big Fellow"— why such a awkwardly silly description when any old fictional name should do. Nonetheless, the movie remains, all in all, a credit to the Lewis canon.

Before bedecking the noir cycle with two of its gems - Gun Crazy and The Big Combo - Joseph H. Lewis exercised his talents on The Undercover Man. Scant surprise that it falls short of those two movies, the first of which boasted Peggy Cummins as Annie Laurie Starr and the second John Alton as director of photography. While the dependably gifted Burnett Guffey pinch-hits for Alton, the absence of any major female role makes a Cummins unnecessary (though still missed). So there's no countervailing axis to balance out the star, Glenn Ford.

While Ford contributed yeoman's work in some indispensable titles, from Gilda to The Big Heat and Human Desire, he always stood at odds to the sardonic cool that was the hallmark of male leads in the cycle. In picture after picture, he unpacked the same old angst and wore it like a hair shirt. When his reasons were up there on the screen - a torch for Rita Hayworth, a blood-lust for revenge - he brought an uncommon intensity to roles that a flippant approach would have watered down.

But in The Undercover Man he turns a glorified civil-service job into the stuff of agony. He's an undercover government agent; his worn-down wife, Nina Foch, joins him occasionally on his assignments but for the most part stays at home near Washington, D.C. where she's come to accept his extended absences with a long face. Ford and his partner James Whitmore find their frequently flipped Treasury credentials carry little weight in big-shouldered Chicago, where the syndicate's ruthlessness strikes witnesses blind and dumb even when victims are gunned down in broad daylight. And the mob's lavishly remunerated mouthpiece, Barry Kelley, impudently taunts Ford for his futile crusade against the never seen Big Fellow (as he's affectionately known around town). But in the dogged tradition of the Feds in movies like The House on 92nd Street and T-Men, Ford keeps slogging away until he finds a chink in the silent armor....

The Undercover Man starts out in the detail-cluttered, reverential way of so many of these para-patriotic films, but about halfway through Lewis finds his stride and eschews hagiography for moviemaking. A tense and violent sequence among the street stalls of Chicago's Italian neighborhood, where a turncoat gangster is chased and killed in front of his little daughter, delivers a welcome jolt after all the handwriting experts and accountants' ledgers. But the movie always slinks back to Ford, suffering valiantly - he's such an irresistible target it's no wonder Kelley can't help needling him. And it's Kelley's sly, smug performance that lends The Undercover Man the subversive grit that, in the absence of Cummins (or any of her sisters), it sorely needs.

Treasury Department agent Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) is looking to take down notorious mob leader Big Fellow.

It's a straight forward crime noir based on the Al Capone investigation and trial. I started off thinking that Ford is playing against type as a villain. That would have been a fun curveball but it quickly reveals itself. As a take on the Capone case, this has many similarities to other such crime dramas. It's generally fine to good although I don't like the little vacation with the wife. It's like the movie takes a vacation from itself. I get the emotional punch it's supposed to pack but it could have done that and more by threatening the wife directly. The tone is off during that section. This has some good parts but it doesn't always hit hard enough. The jury bit is great but of course, that gets done a lot. It would be nice for the danger to feel more intense. I never get the sense that Glenn Ford is ever in fear except for the wife threat.

There is a certain lack of style here that represented two of the Director's seminal Film-Noirs, Gun Crazy (1949) and The Big Combo (1955). But there are some very Noir things that make this more interesting than a standard Studio Crime Drama. There is one scene that you would never find in the "regular stuff". An Italian Grandmother is given an extended, importantly motivational scene, and speaks in her Native Italian. It is translated by her Grandchild in English as the G-Men look on with admiration and respect.

Such a long and laborious Scene, the Studios would say, is too Ethnic and taxing for the White-Bread target audience. But it turns the main Character around and is touching and unique. You gotta love Film-Noir. Another gripping, gritty scene is the murder of a potential Witness in front of the aforementioned 10 year old child and she looks on yelling Papa, Papa, Papa. Another powerful and offbeat scene.

One could quibble and nitpick at some of the corny stuff such as the Leader of the Mob constantly referred to as "The Big Fellow", that's just silly, and the dated text opening, frequently used, that touts the exploits of the Feds as just a bunch of regular Joe's doing their duty for the good of us all.

But this is a street level investigation that seems real and the Locations and the Characters are mostly Film-Noir and this one has enough strength to put it in good standing among, if not the best of, the Genre.