HUNT THE MAN DOWN (1950)

After the bar Happy's Place closes for the night, two employees, Bill and Sally, are cleaning up and counting money. She seems sweet on him but he is reluctant to open up too much to her. A thief known as the Paper Bag Bandit sneaks in to steal the day's earnings and Bill manages to shoot him dead. He's declared a hero in the newspapers until his past comes to light: he's actually Richard Kincaid (James Anderson), a fugitive who vanished twelve years ago when he was found guilty of murder, a crime he swears he didn't commit. He is held and appointed a public defender, Paul Bennett (Gig Young), and we see his story in flashback: Richard meets a friendly group of folks out on the town who invite him back to a house for further merrymaking where they all have a few too many. Joan, one of the women, is alone and dances with Richard, but her jealous husband Dan arrives at the house and pulls a gun on Kincaid. Richard disarms him but says he'd kill him if he could. The next morning, Dan is dead and Richard is arrested. Largely on the somewhat uncertain testimony of the partyers, Richard is about to be found guilty when he takes off. Paul thinks he has a fighting chance of helping Richard and enlists the help of his father, a retired cop, to track down the other partygoers to get them to testify at a new trial. As Paul and his father dig further, secrets turn up and lives are threatened before a final courtroom climax.

This noir film is perhaps best enjoyed as a kind of character study. Most of the partyers are now, twelve years later, living shabbier lives than they might have expected and there is some genuine pathos in seeing these people in reduced circumstances: the football hero was blinded in the war and works as a bookbinder, one is an associate at a small marionette theater, one is a drunken bum, and one has had a nervous breakdown. Only one couple has moved up in the world, to a mansion with a pool, but they don't seem particularly happy. When Eddie Muller introduced this on TCM's Noir Alley, he noted that the sheer number of supporting characters and backstories would make this ideal for a current-day streaming miniseries. While I understand his point, I would not encourage such an idea, as these series are always at least 2 hours too long. Here, at just 70 minutes, the characters remain mostly surface sketches, but there's little wasted time or energy. Top billed Gig Young is a bit colorless as the lawyer, and among the actors playing the witnesses and suspects, only Cleo Moore stands out. But James Anderson (pictured) is quite good as the hapless Richard, who in giving a low-key performance, manages to outshine Gig Young. [TCM]