"Your job is to detect criminals, not to punish them."
Six years after Laura (1944), Otto Preminger reteamed Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney for Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950). Preminger frequently sparred with the Production Code, and Sidewalk tackles police brutality with measured intensity.Detective Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) is demoted for roughing up suspects. His tactics backfire after gangster Scalise (Gary Merrill) murders a gambler. Dixon tracks down Ken Paine (Craig Stevens), another suspect, and accidently kills him. Dixon tries pinning Paine's death on Scalise, but circumstantial evidence fingers Payne's father-in-law Jiggs (Tom Tully). Paine's ex-wife Morgan (Gene Tierney) asks Dixon for help, unaware of the Detective's complicity.
With a sharp script by Ben Hecht, Where the Sidewalk Ends makes a crackerjack noir. Joseph LaShelle's smooth photography highlights New York's nocturnal seediness. Preminger plays long scenes without dialog or music: the opening credits with Mark and his partner (Bert Freed) on patrol, Mark's efforts at hiding the body, a long dock side set piece. The violence is quick, jolting and brutal, fistfights becoming beat-downs, interrogations becoming murders.
Preminger's remarkably critical of his hero. Dixon's a public embarrassment and it's hinted he's tried framing Scalise before. His bosses admit Dixon "gets results" and surreptitiously encourage "enhanced interrogation" on another suspect. But Sidewalk doesn't view this as a good or necessary thing. Mark's tactics might work on a guilty man but kill an innocent one. That, and there's no contrived "ticking time bomb" scenario to justify brutality.
Sidewalk's edginess stands out more than its bows to compromise. Hecht provides Mark a personal motive: his father was a crook, so Mark's self-loathing drives his thuggery. His romance with Morgan humanizes him but seems a bit too convenient for the storyline. And the movie ends on an uplifting note that undercuts some of Mark's nastiness. Even films noir had to appease the Hays Code.
Dana Andrews sells Mark's violence, desperation and torment, making a compelling antihero. Gene Tierney's appealing as ever, but her character's a one-note love interest. Karl Malden gets a showy role as Mark's stern boss; Richard Merrill's silky gangster and Neville Brand's calculating thug make effective villains.
Whatever its shortcomings, Where the Sidewalk Ends seems more cynical than later cop films. From the '60s onward, the crime and action genres crawled with loose cannons who shot, maimed and tortured their way through deserving scumbags. Where the Sidewalk Ends shows these tactics have consequences in real life.
