gsoares-16515 The quality of the picture and the sound of the copy I bought is so bad that most of the time I could not understand the dialogue. I bought this DVD just to see the cameo by Marlene Dietrich, and after her appearance I was somewhat intrigued and decided to watch the entire film. Like other reviews stated the plot is so confusing that it is difficult to follow, and it was not easy for me to watch until the end. Can someone explain to me the final scene? Hope this is not a spoiler!!! What was that woman looking for that was hidden behind a painting in that museum? She kept destroying the backs of the paintings until she finds some papers. And I did not have a clue of what was going on....

arfdawg-1 When the owner of a printing shop is found dead, the District Attorney assumes that it was a suicide. But the Assistant D.A., Howard Malloy, suspects that there is a connection with an extremist political group called the 'Crusaders'. When a journalist whose articles had attacked the Crusaders is also killed, Malloy is convinced. With help from the widow of a prominent judge, he conducts an investigation. As he does so, he meets a peculiar political boss and also an attractive night club singer, each of whom could become either a source of help or a source of danger.The print I saw this on was OK. Not great but OK. The transfer seems to drag, speed up, drag, speed up as if it was taken off a TV. It made it hard to watch.That said, it's a decent foray into Film Noir.

MartinHafer I got this film from one of those public domain mega-packs on DVD. While this is not a bad film, I can see why the film makers didn't bother renewing the copyright--it just wasn't all that interesting. Most of the problem seems to be with the writing. The plot seems to bounce all over the place and where the film began seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with where it ended. Had all the dull moments and irrelevant plots been eliminated or polished, I really would have enjoyed the film a lot more than I did.Franchot Tone plays a prosecutor with the DA's office who is initially looks into the case of a White supremacist who might have been murdered. Whether or not this is the case is uncertain, but when Tone's newspaper friend is killed when he tries investigating (again, it was made to look like a suicide), he knows that there is some sort of conspiracy afoot. However, instead of trying to bash heads and get to the bottom of it, he infiltrates an organization that might be behind all this--as well as buying and selling public officials.As I said, the writing was pretty poor. However, for film nuts like myself, it's still worth seeing for all the strange and unexpected cameos, such as Henry Fonda and John Garfield (among others). Not a good movie but it has enough to it that it isn't a total waste of time seeing it--not exactly a glowing review, huh?!

David (Handlinghandel) ... There has to be a limit. This movie is pretty much a mess. It doesn't feel like New York City, of which I am a native and almost-lifetime resident. It has too many plots going at once. They add up but only with force on the part of the writers.It starts out as a sort of Northern "Storm Warning." (Now, there we have a superb, underrated movie!) I guess the racist posters that set off the plot are symbolic of the beginning of the McCarthy witch-hunts. If they aren't, they don't make any sense: OK, granted: According to my parents Manhattan at that time was not always friendly to people other than Caucasians. But were there actually plots and mobs? I can't believe it.The casting gives it some noir cred. I'm not talking about the brief cameos by big stars. Nor,really, about Franchot Tone. He is OK but he isn't exactly a noir staple and he's maybe a bit old for the role.But we have Jean Wallace. We have Marc Lawrence.For me, the single best feature of the film is the presence in a fairly small but significant role of an actress I had never before tonight heard of: Winifred Lenihan.I see that she was the first person to play the title role in Shaw's "St. Joan" on Broadway. She is in very different territory here. But whoever cast her did so with genius: She is absolutely perfect.Also, I wonder about the character played by Hedley Rainnie. He's ambiguous in many ways. He wears a beard and maybe that's meant to signify his foreign origins. I wonder, though: Is he intended to be gay? The way the character is portrayed reminds me of the intentionally creepy go-between for the Senator and his ex lover in the better known and overrated "Advise and Consent" almost a decade later.It isn't a good movie, in sum. And the print I saw was really bad. But watch it for Ms. Lenihan. In a very quiet way, she's brilliant!