Entre la noche y el alba

This is a superb crime drama featuring two buddy cops, excellently played by Mark Stevens and Edmond O'Brien. O'Brien's performance is especially marvellous, and he was really in his stride. Three years later he would be tapped by director Ida Lupino to star in 'The Bigamist' (1953), which was surely the greatest performance of his career. He 'really had it in him' despite not being the leading man type, and he should have won more than just one Oscar in his career. This film is helped by a sensationally good screenplay by Eugene Ling. It is packed with excellent one-liners and gags, and has a lot of well-judged humour, even though it is a tense and noirish crime thriller, with a lot of police procedural background. At one point, one of the cops thrusts a bill into the breast pocket of a hood's jacket and says: 'Here, buy yourself a new head, one with a brain in it.' Salty comments like that run all the way through. Modern screenwriters have absolutely no idea how to write wisecracks which work when spoken, it is a lost art, and this is one reason why so many contemporary films are so lacklustre and dull. The chief 'hood' in this story is a criminal played by Donald Buka, who is so eerily convincing as a crazed crook, with his relentless eyes and severe case of lockjaw that one's spine tingles menacingly. Gale Storm is the wholesome love interest who has to overcome the psychological trauma of her policeman father having been killed on duty, and can she get involved with a cop and risk all that pain again. It is a good solid story. Buddy cops really can be just like that. My best friend from school became a sergeant on the D.C. police force, and I used to ride around in his patrol car with him and his buddy while on duty, visit the jails and chat to the latest prostitute arrests, hang around with the cops in his precinct at the station, and exchange gags and joke with them about the street corner drug-pushers ('candy-men'). Banter was the order of the day, as it is the only way to keep sane on a big city US police force, with enforced familiarity with human vermin on a daily basis. Two nice guys really can drive around, responding to calls, draw out their guns and shoot violent criminals, bring people in in handcuffs, and then sit and have a quiet hamburger and roar with jokes with their pals. Mark Stevens and Edmond O'Brien are wholly convincing as buddy cops, mixing toughness with tenderness, and it is obvious that they were copied in hundreds of later television dramas. This was undoubtedly a seminal film which had enormous influence on the film industry. It is very entertaining to watch, though some people will bite their nails anxiously in between the jokes, as portions of the tale are extremely harrowing, especially when a little girl is held hostage by a mad gunman and dangled out of a high window to prevent the police firing at him.

Mark Stevens and Edmond O'Brien are buddies from the war. Now they are cops together in the same patrol car. When Gale Storm comes into their lives, it seems that they might fight, but O'Brien bows out gracefully. This is, until hoodlum Donald Buka escapes from prison and kills Stevens.

One of the reasons that O'Brien is so good in his B pictures around the end of the fifth decade of the 20th Century is that he looks like an ordinary Joe: all right looking, but nothing to right home about, and he could afford to take off a few pounds. For anyone else, this would have meant supporting roles, and he did a lot of those. However, he also played leads in noirs and cop movies like this one, and even westerns. That's because he typified how American men thought of themselves: ordinary people, yeah, but capable of important things. To watch his descent into brutality after Stevens' death here, even with the Production Code still in force, is a fine bit of acting.

I found this movie to be very enjoyable to watch. There was no masterful overriding story, but it moved along at a good pace, was quite genial and had no faults. It might be called an early "procedural" in today's lingo: lots of radio squad car scenes, beaming messages in cop talk back and forth, well photographed auto chase scenes and shootouts. The directing, script, acting and cinema-photography were superior. In the movie the cops were all righteous and the criminals all incorrigibly bad.

Three things stood out for me, favorably: (1) I was always a big Gale Storm fan, stemming from my childhood watching of "My Little Margie" re-runs on TV (Gale was the co-star of the TV show, and part of the romantic triangle in this movie). (2) The repartee was often witty and jocular and never off-putting. For example, on an early date, Officer Rocky Barnes (played by Mark Stevens) is having his first dance with Gale Storm, and, holding her tightly he says, "I've been waiting a long time for this." She replies, "I can believe it. I feel a rib cracking." He responds, "Oh, control yourself, Barnes. This lady's got to last." (3) The relationship between the two police partners (Stevens and Edmond O'Brien) was friendly and jocular. It was nice to observe their respect for each other. Both were quite competent. O'Brien was the more serious, cynical and hard on criminals. Stevens was more relaxed and sensitive to criminals' feelings.

No need to recap the plot.

The opening scenes suggest this will be a tough-minded buddy picture, with the great Eddie O'Brien and a good-natured Mark Stevens playing the two prowl car cops. Fortunately, this buddy part is convincing. Add some jarring action scenes from much underrated Director Gordon Douglas, and there's considerable to recommend. Trouble is the later romantic parts shift the mood into none-to-convincing light-hearted comedy. To me, the shifts are noticeable, weakening the movie as a whole. Plus, I'm inclined to think Gale Storm is miscast as a police dispatcher, much too malt shop and glowing. Maybe it's the My Little Margie factor, for which she was perfect.

Nonetheless, there are a number of nice touches, such as the funny looking little boy, some good snappy lines, along with songbird Gale Robbins to add atmosphere. All in all, the 90-minutes doesn't fit easily into any category. It's mostly a crime drama, yet lacks the moral ambiguity of true noir. Still, any chance to catch Eddie O'Brien, one of Hollywood's best actors, makes the movie worthwhile, along with the great action scenes.

(In passing—can't help noticing the similarity of this 1950 screenplay to 1952's The Turning Point. And that's down to even O'Brien as the luckier of the two buddies, William Holden being the other buddy. I wonder: could it be that Hollywood would actually recycle a plot just two years later—then again, do mosquitoes bite.)

Between Midnight and Dawn is directed by Gordon Douglas and adapted to screenplay by Eugene Ling from a story by Gerald Drayson Adams and Leo Katcher. It stars Edmond O'Brien, Mark Stevens, Gale Storm, Donald Buka and Gale Robbins. Music is by George Duning and cinematography by George E. Diskant.

Stevens and O'Brien play two prowl car cops, long time friends who fall for the same woman (Storm), but that could never come between them. That's the job of rising crime boss Ritchie Garris (Buka)...

On the page it looked as if it easily could have got bogged down by romantic threads and buddy buddy cop formula. Thankfully that isn't the case. Finding its way into a number of film noir publications, it's a pic that only just qualifies on account of certain narrative thematics and the night time photography of the always excellent Diskant.

On its own terms anyway it's a damn good policer, one that is handled with knowing direction from Douglas and features the reassuring presences of Stevens and O'Brien, both of whom play cops with different attitudes to the job, but both believable and never played as trite good cop bad cop fodder.

In the lady corner are Storm and Robbins, the former in the middle of our twin testosterone fuelled coppers, and the latter the gangster's moll. Both sultry and beautiful - even if Storm is sporting a hairstyle that equally is both distracting for the character and does her obvious sexiness no favours, but both the gals are written with thought and performed as such.

Then there is Buka as scumbag Garris. This character clearly has ideas above his station, something which our coppers gleefully like to remind him of. But Garris is a nasty piece of work, which ultimately leads us to a thrilling and suspenseful finale. Buka (The Street with No Name) really should have had a bigger noir/crime film career.

Sometimes funny and laced with choice dialogue, this still also manages to impact with dramatic, suspenseful and attention grabbing scenes. This a film that's easy to recommend to lovers of 40s/50s policer movies; it's also pretty bloody for the time. There's a great crew behind this and they don't let anyone down. 7/10