Every since Richard Widmark brought a fresh breath of poison to the role of a viciously psychopathic gangster in last year’s “Kiss of Death,” the gun-film cognoscenti have been waiting to catch this boy as another modern desperado with that wicked gleam in his eye. Twentieth Century-Fox is most considerate, and now, in “The Street With No Name,” it is trying to oblige with Mr. Widmark in a sizzling crime film on the Roxy’s screen.Those who were chilled by this young fellow in his first homicidal exercise may be just a shade disappointed in his current appearance as a thug.
For it must be ruefully admitted that he is not quite as picturesque in this present cops-and-robbers thriller as he was in that other one. Here he is less malignant, less expressive of lunacy and his previous hoodlum mannerisms have been considerably toned down. That diabolic grimace and that eeriely sadistic laugh which characterized his Tommy Udo have conspicuously gone by the board.But, then, in the present exhibition, Mr. Widmark has ascended the scale of underworld prestige and authority. Here he is a “big man,” a clever and ruthless gang leader who is “building an organization along scientific lines.” Here he is a top-flight menace, marked man for the FBI, and his only distinctive crotchet is a mania against drafts—the kind, that is, that blow in windows or through the cracks of doors. So it is really not surprising to find him behaving more in line with the conventions of movie gang leaders who have to be suave and screne.Despite this restriction, however, he still does a colorful job as the boss of a pack of youthful gunmen which is infiltrated by a lad from the FBI. No actor yet has managed to move in the fur live, feline way that this fellow does, and few have shown us such cruelty in the face. His timing and tension are perfect and the timber of his voice is that of filthy water going down a sewer.
Hand it to Mr. Widmark; he still makes an interesting mugg.And, for all its conventional pattern and its melodramatic clichés, “The Street With No Name” is a vivid and generally suspenseful crime film. It is one of those demonstrations in which the FBI always gets its man by the usual combination of courage and scientific skill, the courage being contributed by the agents who brilliantly pretend to be anything else but detectives and the skill being contributed by “Washington.” And it is done in the currently popular “documentary” style, with the crime haunts and dumps of “Central City” looking quite as literal as the laboratories of the FBI.In the role of the key Federal agent who worms his way into the mob (and, naturally, almost gets bumped off), Mark Stevens does a sturdy, flexible job. Lloyd Nolan is pat as his inspector and a half dozen or more other boys—notably Donald Buka and Joseph Pevney—are incisive as members of the mob. True, there are times in this picture when the heroes aren’t quite as smart as their indicated training should make them—when they do, indeed, rather foolish things. And there are times, too, when the gangsters and a corrupt commissioner seem just a bit dumb. But all of that goes with the pattern which Harry Kleiner has followed in his script. William Keighley has directed it swiftly and with sharp emphasis and, as a consequence, it packs the old punch.
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