A Warped Killer Genius Evades Police in Evocative Procedural. Based on a very true story.
DIRECTED BY ALFRED WERKER/1948
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: JANUARY 30, 2024/KL STUDIO CLASSICS
Don’t mind me, I’m just here for the John Alton stuff…. By which I of course mean, the famed cinematographer’s expressionistic use of window blind shadows and the like. People know it. It’s a look that instantly became indelibly linked to Film Noir, although when Alton pioneered it, it was more out of utilitarian practicality than anything else. Throwing interesting shadows onto blank walls cuts the cost of having to decorate said walls, and casts an appropriate ominousness in the process. Darkness and light, alternating independently of one another. In Alton’s hands, the darkness was never inkier, the light never more piercing. He took the lights down low, literally. (As opposed to rigged from up high).
Indicative in the dark/light window blind pattern is a defined duality that extends to the souls of Noir’s best characters. For the characters of the 1948 crime classic He Walked by Night, it’s not duality so much as sharp distinction. Based on the real-life criminal tear of one Edwin “Machine Gun” Walker (sans any machine guns in the hands of the villain), the film plays out as two different movies of two different qualities and sensibilities alternating on the screen. There’s the painfully cut and dried police procedural, and there’s the impressionistic bits with the tortured killer. Back and forth we go. Dark/light/dark/light/dark/light, straight down the line to The End.
Perhaps explaining the jarring polarities of He Walked by Night is that the credited filmmaker Alfred Werker isn’t the film’s only director. We’re told that the great Anthony Mann helmed some of this feature. While we don’t know the entirety of who directed what within the film, we can certainly guess. We do know that Mann helmed the highlight of He Walked by Night, the sublime subterranean tunnel standoff. While it’s easy and even logical to presume that Mann oversaw all the sequences featuring Richard Basehart as the deranged Roy Martin a.k.a Roy Morgan, the disc’s audio commentaries suggest that it may not be as straightforward as “Mann made the good stuff, Werker made the boring stuff.”
Basehart, never not frighteningly compelling here, enters He Walked by Night walking by night. It’s a deliciously atmospheric empty street, full-on oneiric, as he cases an electronics store. When routinely questioned by a patrolling cop, he suddenly opens fire on him at point blank range, then runs. In his printed essay included with the 2017 ClassicFlix Blu-ray edition of the film, Mann historian Max Alvarez cites the earlier claim of author Jean-Claude Missiaen that this moody and startling scene was the first of four prominent sequences in He Walked by Night that the young Mann filmed after Werker’s cut was deemed unworthy. (The others are the attempted ambush of Basehart’s character in Whit Bissell’s character’s electronics lab, the brief bullet removal scene, and the sewer-tunnels finale. These are Missiaen’s highly educated deductions from spending time with Mann years later).
In the film, the murder of their cohort sends the police force into high gear with an aggressive manhunt and a dragnet. Scott Brady stars as the clean-cut police sergeant (though yes, all the cops here are “clean-cut”) hellbent on getting this strangest and most duplicitous of murderers. That Basehart’s character is closely modeled after a real life psychotic eccentric’s crime spree and plot makes He Walked by Night all the more unsettling. You can learn more of the slippery Edwin Walker’s strange plan to build a device that destroys metal in the audio commentaries provided on the new KL Studio Classics’ disc.
Getting back to dragnets, one of He Walked by Night’s several claims to fame is being the inspiration for Dragnet. Future Joe Friday Jack Webb, featuring prominently as one of the police personnel, became fascinated with the processes of law enforcement as he observed it being dutifully recreated on set. Consequently, from this meager procedural cascaded not only the Dragnet radio show, TV series’ and whatnot, but untold cop-tainment continuing today. Hence, He Walked by Night’s impressively workaday police station and its no-nonsense denizens persevere… for better or worse. The film opens with the following text, as earnest as the day is long, and that influential as well:
“THIS IS A TRUE STORY. It is known to the Police Department of one of our largest cities as the most difficult homicide case in its experience, principally because of the diabolical cleverness, intelligence and cunning of a completely unknown killer… … The record is set down here factually – as it happened. Only the names are changed – to protect the innocent.” Even those with only a casual familiarity to Webb’s Dragnet will recognize that last line, which originated here.
Much of this information is hashed out on the two feature-length commentaries found on KL Studio Classics’ new Blu-ray release of the film. Film historian Imogen Sara Smith, who specializes in Film Noir, has a brand-new track wherein she discusses the film in an academic yet sometimes subjective manner. Immediately, she correctly pegs He Walked by Night as not a true Film Noir but as a police procedural adorned in Film Noir trappings.
The other track, carried over from the ClassicFlix Blu-ray, features author/film historian Alan K. Rode and writer/film historian Julie Kirgo. Far more spirited than the Imogen Sara Smith commentary if only by virtue of having two kindred spirits making their way through a film they love, this track is an easier listen if no less informative. Rode explains that the name of the character of Police Captain Breen (Roy Roberts) was no doubt a jab at the film’s production company Eagle Lion’s past difficulties with getting films past the Hays code, which was enforced by Joseph Breen.
While not everything from the out-of-print ClassicFlix edition ports over to the new KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (specifically, a twelve-minute featurette on the making of the film and the colorful twenty-four-page booklet with photos, movie posters and the helpful essay by Max Alvarez), there are good reasons to pick up the latter release. The top reason is the spectacular brand-new HD transfer, from a 16bit 4K Scan of the 35mm Fine Grain. The other is the Imogen Sara Smith commentary, already covered. Slipcover collectors take note: this release has one.
All that said, it’s still true that I’m just here for the John Alton stuff. Well, that and the Anthony Mann stuff. As rich as the presumed Mann portions of He Walked by Night truly are, it’s Alton’s stripped-down precise lighting that really make them pop. While exact studio records of this production have yet to be discovered, we know enough to declare this the third official collaboration between Mann and Alton (following 1947’s T-Men and 1948’s Raw Deal), with several more to follow.
It’s always disappointing when police procedurals are marketed as Film Noir, which is once again the case here. The big combo of Alton and Mann, however, thoroughly enrich He Walked by Night, particularly Richard Basehart’s unsettling performance. And Alton shot the whole movie.