Main Street After Dark

This film is about a family of scum and a cop, Lt. Lorrgan (Edward Arnold) who knows that they are scum and hopes to catch them! It seems that the Dibson family would rather make money picking pockets and rolling drunks instead of working and one of the sons, Lucky, is coming home from prison. He's learned nothing from his incarceration and plans on going right back to his crooked ways....just like his mother, brother, sister and Lucky's wife.

Up until the end, I fully intended to give this one a 7...or possibly and 8. MGM Made an awfully good B-movie...that is, up until the end. Just a few minutes from the end of the film, the Lieutenant goes to the Dibson family home to look for the sons. However, Ma doesn't want him arresting her sons, so she pulls a gun on the cop. He's able to get it away from her and only a minute or so later, the sons arrive. Now, remember, Ma just threatened to kill the cop with a gun...and no one is paying attention to her and she, once again, grabs a gun!! Now, no cop could be THAT stupid...and Arnold's character didn't seem dumb at all up until then. I think the director just wanted to wrap the film up and keep it B-movie length....and Bs were supposed to be inexpensive...so they just filmed this contrived portion instead of coming up with some better ending!

From the outside, the Gibsons are an all-American suburban family. In reality, it's a den of thieves. Ma Dibson is trading with crooked pawn dealer Keller (Hume Cronyn). His son Lefty gets released from prison. Her daughter Rosalie and daughter-in-law Jessie Belle dance with and steal from servicemen. Posey is her other thieving son. Lt. Lorrgan keeps a close eye on family and offers Lefty a farm job milking cows.

This is an one hour movie that plays more like a Crime Does Not Pay short. It's also possibly a warning for soldiers on leave. That seems to be part of the war effort. The acting is pulpy good especially sassy Audrey Totter. I am surprised to see Hume Cronyn who dons a bald cap to look like his older self although I don't think he ever got that bald. I like the family although I wish their thieving is more imaginative and dangerous.

Main Street After Dark starts out like a big city Shadow of A Doubt, takes a brief turn into Arsenic and Old Lace territory, and then spends it's last half hour playing out as an expanded edition of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series. It's vaguely unsatisfying but features a stellar cast and has moments of noir sensibility. There are many worse ways to spend a mere 57 minutes of time.

While boasting "more stars than there are in heaven" MGM was not terribly stellar when it came to making crime pictures. This is a somewhat clunky example of that shortfall, but still worth an hour of your time.

What's interesting about Main Street After Dark is its noirish view of the American home front during World War II, made when the war was still going on.

No Andy Hardy-like coziness here. Main Street in this burg is teeming with pickpockets and pattyrollers (whatever those are) all eager to bamboozle the boys in uniform before they ship out.

All in all, it's a surprisingly gritty take on the seamy side of wartime America, enlivened by the screen debut of Audrey Totter, who plays-what else?-one tough dame.

This film belongs to the first part of Edward L Cahn's career, before he drowned in grade B and even Z movies industry. This light hearted crime film made for MGM is not uninteresting for gem diggers as I am. This is a feature destined to the whole family for matinee theaters. It is short but not as sharp and brutal as a Warner Bros pictures of the same period, because this is not Ma Barker and her sons gang, another crime family scheme. And I found very amusing a scene of the whole criminal family, sitting in the living room and listening on the radio, not a song nor the news but guess what, the police messages thtru a scanner.....very unusual...