A Face do Perigo

Railroaded! (1947)

*** (out of 4)

Anthony Mann directed this thriller, which has a Detective (Hugh Beaumont) trying to clear an innocent man of murder charges. The Detective eventually falls for the suspect's sister (Sheila Ryan), which leads to a wannabe gangster (John Ireland) who we know is the real killer. This is a pretty suspenseful and highly entertaining little film that has a whole lot going for it. Mann does a terrific job at keeping the film moving very nicely and he has enough interesting characters for two films. This was my first time seeing Beaumont outside of his role of the father on Leave it to Beaver and I was shocked to see how well he played a tough guy. His Detective has all the charm, energy and toughness, which is expected in a film like this. Ireland is terrific as the thug and Ryan does a nice job, although she's not on the same level as the two men. There's also a wonderful fight between two women, which has to be seen to be believed.

Top billing for "Railroaded!" goes to the great actor John Ireland who plays the coldblooded killer Duke Martin. Today, Ireland is perhaps best remembered for his role as the gunslinger, Cherry Valance, in the John Wayne western classic "Red River" and for his Academy-Award- nominated performance as a reporter in another Hollywood classic "All the King's Men." Duke Martin, as with most of the heavies in noir flicks, is a misogynist. But this time the woman hater doesn't get away with it completely. Both Clara Calhoun (Jane Randolph) and Rosie Ryan (Sheila Ryan) put him in his place. When Duke misquotes Oscar Wilde, "Some women should be beaten regularly, like gongs" (it was actually Noel Coward who used the line), Clara is quick to respond to the effect that if that line belonged to Oscar Wilde, then let him have it. When Rosie and Duke first meet at Duke's club, Duke calls women "dames." Rosie responds sharply, "I don't like that term." Duke backs up and uses the still somewhat derogatory "gals."

The plot involves Rosie's brother, Steve, portrayed by unknown actor Ed Kelly, who only made three films to my knowledge. Duke and his girlfriend, Clara, frame Steve for a bookie heist, during which time a patrolman is killed. The police are after a quick conviction and are getting ready to go to trial and ask for the death penalty when Police Sgt. Mickey Ferguson (Hugh Beaumont, aka Ward Cleaver) falls for Rosie and decides that her brother may not be guilty after all. Ferguson attempts to help Rosie find the real murderer when Rosie decides to conduct her own investigation by becoming chums with Duke. This all leads to more murders until the ultimate confrontation between Ferguson and Duke. The film is fast-paced and somewhat violent for its day.

The creative use of darkness and shadow was an important ingredient of noir cinema, but as one IMDb reviewer has already noted, there is so much darkness in "Railroaded!" that at times it is difficult to see what is happening. One reason for this may be viewing the film on a TV screen. Perhaps on the big screen there was no problem. Outside of this minor weakness, "Railroaded!" is a winner all the way.

Set Up! or Framed! might be better titles than Railroaded! While it's true that the police pursue their suspect (Ed Kelly) with undue alacrity, it's also true that they're only following a trail of maliciously planted evidence. And an odd feature of the movie is that Kelly remains almost an incidental character (not even appearing in the credits); the focus stays on the police and the real behind-the-scenes villain.

Brash blonde Jane Randolph operates a little beauty salon that's really a front for a back-room book. One night a couple of masked robbers knock it over, but things go wrong: A beat cop is killed, and one of the gunmen (Keefe Brasselle) takes a bullet. Soon detective Hugh Beaumont knocks on Kelly's door, led there by the boy's monogrammed navy scarf, a sighting of his van at the scene, and a description provided by Randolph. Even Brasselle, bandaged up like the Invisible Man, names Kelly in deathbed testimony.

The only one who believes his innocence is his sister (Sheila Ryan). Luckily, Beaumont knows her from the old neighborhood and still is a bit sweet on her. Unluckily, so is the man who set up her brother (John Ireland) as part of a coverup to swindle the head of the syndicate both he and Randolph work for. Little by little, the craftily stitched-together ruse starts to pull apart at the seams, and the hotheaded Ireland grows more reckless and violent...

Directed by Anthony Mann just before his collaboration with cinematographer John Alton took his work to a new plateau, Railroaded! displays some of his trademark tricks (a taut story line; swift and unexpected burst of violence; shadows used not merely as mood but visual metaphors).

And Ireland gets not only top billing but one of his best roles. When he's not slapping around Randolph for her sloppy drinking (in the grand tradition of alcoholic molls like Claire Trevor in Key Largo and Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat), he's fetishistically perfuming his bullets. He's quite the sex-equals-violence kind of guy; when Randolph and Ryan get into a hair-pulling tussle, he watches from an alcove with a nasty smirk on his face, and his gun barrel unconsciously traces the action. It's as if it's deciding who will be the lucky recipient of its payload.

Anthony Mann directed some of the very best noirs of the 1940s and early 1950s.

This one is brutal, hard-hitting, and unrelenting till its Hollywood ended. (The ending may have been tacked on. I don't know. But it works organically with the whole, unlike many others.)

The problem for me with some of his movies, this one included, is that they are so dark they're almost impossible to see at times. Yes, it's atmospheric. But it's also frustrating.

The literal noir in some -- not all -- of his movies reminds me of the staging of Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, it's brooding and intense. But it's also really hard to see.

A faked robbery goes awry and a cop is killed, causing the perpetrators to frame an innocent kid to take the rap. What they don't foresee is the kid's stubborn sister.

John Ireland makes one nasty bad guy, and when he lovingly polishes that gunbarrel with perfumed bullets, we get the idea. Yes indeed, he's more than just a bad guy. The movie's a crime drama done in noirish style by the expert Anthony Mann. There's little of the hallmark ambiguity of classic noir in the characters. Nonetheless, there's the innocent kid Steve (Kelly) who looks to be the victim of a malevolent noirish fate. Of course, there has to be a cheap dame in the crime mix, and Jane Randolph flops around effectively as Duke's (Ireland) brassy blonde punching bag.

Note how the movie starts out in slam-bang fashion, and how effectively Mann uses close- ups, especially of the suddenly terrified Marie (Converse), to turn screen violence into a sense of real violence. This, I think, was a Mann specialty and one reason he's treasured by fans of noir. Then too, that shootout in the shadowy nightclub amounts to a clever touch of visual imagination. No, the story itself is not exactly novel, while Beaumont makes the kind of cop you'd expect from Beaver Cleaver's dad. Still, the movie's done with style and conviction, with an outstanding turn from Ireland, and rightfully belongs in the canon of 40's noir.