C-Man

Dean Jagger, a US customs agent, hunts he murderer of a childhood friend who was killed while on the trail of a stolen necklace.

Where did this movie hide for so long? Set and shot primarily in New York City this is a gritty crime drama that seems to predate many other better known films. Its raw and in your face with a documentary edge of real street s and real places. The style reminded me of the films of Orson Welles, especially a film like Mr Arkadin. It also feels like the Lemmy Caution films of Eddie Constantine and other low budget European films. There is an edge to the film making, a do what it takes attitude that produces some surprising and some violent scenes. This is not the type of film you'd expect from an American studio, certainly not in 1949.

This is one of those movies that seems a bit hokey at first but by the time ten minutes have passed you're hooked and are willing to follow the story where ever it goes just because its a good story being told in an interesting manner.

I don't know why this movie isn't better known. Certainly its not a great movie, but its a damn good one. It reminded me of the sort of movie you'd catch at 2am on the Late Late Show when you're half awake, trying to fall asleep only to fall in its clutches and stay up all night... I think I would have thought this was even better if I saw this at 2am.

This is one to see and search out (Even though at this writing IMDb lists it as unavailable Alpha Video does have it on DVD) 7 out of 10.

You will read that this is hidden treasure. I guess it's pretty hidden, but that's possibly because it's no treasure.

C-Man's chief claim to fame is that the score won a Pulitzer Prize. Be glad it wasn't played during the film, just the credits. What little bit that was played during the film was intrusive.

This B movie had some talented people: Dean Jagger, who won an Oscar the next year, John Carradine, Harry Landers, and stage actress Edith Atwater.

The story concerns a customs agent on the trail of a $325,000 necklace - that's $4 million today, and several people have been killed because of it.

The fight scenes in this were atrocious.

The plot was somewhat convoluted.

When his best friend is murdered in pursuit of jewel smugglers, customs agent Dean Jagger finds himself assigned to track down the killers and close the case. He flies to Europe in order to catch a return flight on which a chief suspect (Réné Paul) will be traveling. Before boarding, Jagger makes the acquaintance of a war-bride (Lottie Elwen), journeying to America to join her fiancé.

During the night flight across the Atlantic, Elwen falls `ill;' (she's been drugged on board by soused-up sawbones John Carradine, working for the smuggling ring). From the airport, she's whisked away in a hijacked ambulance, wearing a priceless necklace. There's a traffic crash, and she escapes to flee (she thinks) to her waiting fiancé; alas, the groom-to-be has been murdered as well, by one of Paul‘s myrmidons, vicious hothead Harry Landers. Jagger meets her there, thinking she's an accomplice; when he comes to trust her, he goes undercover to penetrate the operation....

C-Man is a New York story told in the warts-and-all, in-your-face style of the following year's The Tattooed Stranger or Guilty Bystander (the latter also directed by Joseph Lerner) – a low-down, dirty town. The location shooting takes us to as many liquor stores as Ray Milland patronized in The Lost Weekend (Jagger is tracking down Carradine, who has a taste for pricey Benedictine), to jazz cellars and fleabag hotels (the one `penthouse' we visit is dowdily middle-class). Part of the grunge can be laid to a desperately low budget, but the filmmakers turn their liabilities into pungent atmosphere.

They also take some chances. One bludgeoning murder in this unusually brutal movie turns almost abstract, like an experimental film; the striking score by Gail Kubik (who by the way is male) evokes mid-century avant-garde classical music – of the `academic' school – or even third-stream jazz. The low-voltage Jagger, unfortunately, is a bit long in the tooth for the derring-do, and four-square for the lippy repartée, required of him. But beneath its tacky veneer, C-Man shows an unexpected grittiness and audacity.

Customs agent Dean Jagger (Cliff Holden) goes on the trail of a necklace and a killer. He is the C-Man.

The film moves along at a quick pace and if you just go with it, it carries you along. Unfortunately, it is a little confusing at times and because the picture quality has deteriorated, some dramatically filmed sequences are confusing instead of effective. John Carradine (Doc Spencer) plays a drunkard - it's his look that carries it off for him, not particularly his acting, although he probably wasn't acting! The soundtrack alternates between the over-dramatic and the jazzy art-house cool that suggests experimental film.

There are some very fake punch-ups that run alongside disturbing violent incidents. Make sure that your bed-knobs don't unscrew! The night club scene is also slightly embarrassing - terrible song, unrealistic audience and some poor acting.

Overall, the film is watchable - it should be better, though. Maybe a re-make?

Dean Jagger is a customs agent with a trench coat. He's told a good friend has been killed tracking down a jewelry theft ring in Marseilles, and he's been assigned to fly to Europe so he can be seated on a flight next to the suspected head of the operation. Through mischance, he's seated next to Lottie Elwen, who's coming to America to marry a guy whose apartment has been invaded and he's been killed. She's also carrying the latest batch of stolen ice.

It's what I call a paycheck movie, made of bits and pieces of other movies, filled with talent in front of and behind the camera who haven't made it and who may never do so. Jagger, who had been struggling in the Bs for 20 years, goes undercover as a dumb PI who gets his head beat in for information; his next movie would win him the Oscar for Best Supporting Oscar, but here he's doing his best with a ridiculous script. Director Joseph Lerner would struggle for ten years, making a few documentaries and independent Bs like this and disappear from the movies. Second-billed John Carradine .... well, here was an actor whom everyone respected and who never really clicked. Cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld, DP on his second movie, shot the streets of New York like he hated them, and did well enough eventually. His black-and-white camerawork topped out with FAIL-SAFE and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Composer Gail Kubik would turn his score from this movie into a Pulitzer-Prize winning symphony, but here it just sounds.... cheap. . And that's this whole movie: cheap,with everyone trying to do a decent job and earn their paychecks and do well enough that some one would notice and say "Well, this guy has potential. Let's give him a shot. Most of the people here never really got that shot, or had long minor careers. Well, sometimes that's what people want.