The 1945 spy film The House on 92nd Street was one of the more interesting Hollywood films of its era. Based on a true story about the FBI dismantling a German spy ring in the USA, it was later considered to be Hollywood’s first docu-drama. Its success led to the 1948 sequel The Street with No Name, directed by William Keighley.
Unlike the previous film, the script for The Street with No Name, written by Harry Kleiner, is only loosely based on real-life FBI cases. The plot is set in the fictional “Central City” (standing in for the real-life Los Angeles), namely the Skid Row area, which has recently begun to suffer from a crime wave perpetrated by a gang of vicious robbers who have murdered two people in a matter of days. One of the robberies involved a bank, which gives the FBI and Inspector Briggs (played by Lloyd Nolan) jurisdiction to investigate. What looks like a lead emerges when Robert Danker (played by Robert Patten), a young man with a criminal record, gets arrested, but soon his alibi is confirmed and Danker is released from custody, only to later be found stabbed to death.
Briggs decides to infiltrate an undercover agent into the gang, and the man selected for the mission is Gene Cordell (played by Mark Stevens). He takes on the identity of a drifter named “George Manley”, comes to Skid Row, and frequents various spots where career criminals gather. One of those is a gym owned by Alec Styles (played by Richard Widmark), who is quite impressed both with Manley’s boxing skills and with hints that he might earn a living through less-than-legal means. Styles recruits Manley into his organisation after checking his false criminal record, created by the FBI, through a police informant. However, Cordell/Manley’s attempt to have Styles and his gang caught red-handed is wrecked when Styles receives a last-minute warning, now knowing that he has a police informant in his ranks.
The Street with No Name is, like The House on 92nd Street, made in a semi-documentary style, with narration and a few scenes depicting real-life FBI agents and staff doing their work. Like the previous film, this one was made in co-operation with the FBI and, subsequently, the script praises the efficiency of that agency in fighting crime and shows how such work is inherently dangerous. However, the fictional nature of the story makes the second film look more conventional and much more aligned with an earlier pro-FBI propaganda piece, the 1935 film G-Men, which was also directed by William Keighley. The conventions include the obligatory female character in the form of Styles’ long-suffering wife Judy, played by young Barbara Lawrence, as well as a relatively long boxing match scene in the middle, followed by a suspenseful final showdown which takes place in a factory at night.
Keighley directs the film well, but he can’t compensate for the lack of charisma in Mark Stevens, who is solid but not particularly remarkable in his role. He is easily overshadowed by Richard Widmark, who plays a villain who, while much more restrained compared to his breakout performance in Kiss of Death, is very menacing and intelligent. The very conventionality of The Street with No Name works in the film’s favour, but it is often at odds with the explicit propaganda of the script, just as this propaganda is at odds with the semi-noirish realism.
In 1955, the film was remade as House of Bamboo, a colour film directed by Samuel Fuller and set in Japan.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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