Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) Reviews

• Hollywood Gears Up for the Cold War

  dougdoepke2008-03-17

  Well-made political thriller. 1948 is the year Hollywood joined the anti-communist crusade, and there's no mistaking the bad guys-- Raymond Burr in a Lenin-like goatee, a sinister gathering of "comrades", and Hollywood's version of commie rhetoric about how the individual doesn't matter in the global scheme of things. Up to that point, the studios had been turning out generally pro-Soviet films in behalf of our WWII allies. But now, turning on a dime, we find out what perfidious characters we had been supporting. Oh well, as they say, in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. Square-jawed Dennis O'Keefe makes for a dogged and intrepid FBI agent aided by Scotland Yard loan-out Louis Hayward. Together, they show what sterling fellows the English-speaking world turns out. They're on the trail of a covert Soviet spy sneaking out secrets from what is likely a bomb designing laboratory, though it's never specified. The plot rather prophetically anticipates the Klaus Fuchs affair of 1949, when the German-born spy was exposed as smuggling A-bomb secrets to the Soviets as early as 1945. The suspense revolves around who the lab spy is and how he's getting the secrets out. It makes for entertaining, if workman-like, viewing. The familiar narrator Reed Hadley lends stentorian authority, along with some fine location photography. Together they impart a sense of reality to what are otherwise standard stereotypes and a melodramatic plot. Sure it's Hollywood's manipulative brand of political cinema, this time turned on our former friends. But at least it's watchable, minus the kind of cold-war hysteria that came to characterize other efforts of the period. All in all, an interesting and revealing reflection of its time.

• Overlooked film

  gene-862005-01-16

  Walk a Crooked Mile was filmed almost entirely on location. FBI agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Scotland Yard operative Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) team up to investigate a security leak at a Southern California atomic plant. The investigation takes place in San Francisco, where a communist spy ring flourishes. Actors as Raymond Burr and Philip Van Zandt play the communist agents. The documentary technique gives a factual gloss to the melodramatic format. Action moves back and forth between San Francisco and the atomic plant in southern California. Gordon Douglas' knowledgeable directing keeps the film moving forward. He manages to build suspense through misdirection. The method used to take information out of the atomic plant is well protected thus keeping you guessing. The movie is typical 40s and early 50s film noir.

• Neat espionage yarn done in documentary style...

  Doylenf2008-03-12

  WALK A CROOKED MILE is the sort of brisk, documentary style espionage yarn so often made during the '40s, using narration to tell the story of two espionage agents (DENNIS O'KEEFE and LOUIS HAYWARD) assigned to track down whomever is responsible for leaking top secret information developed at a nuclear plant in California. Most of the action takes place in San Francisco, where O'Keefe and Hayward discover that an artist (ONSLOW STEVENS) is putting coded information beneath his paintings when he receives it from a spy working for the government agency. The story traces how the spy ring operates and it is these details that give the film added interest before the spies are caught. All of the methods must seem dated by today's standards of F.B.I. work, but the manner of presentation is gripping and the clever cat-and-mouse game that is played between the agents and the spies is credible and fascinating. It's smoothly directed by Gordon Douglas at a fast clip. RAYMOND BURR has his usual "bad guy" role as one of he spies, and LOUISE ALLBRITTON, CARL ESMOND, ART BAKER and CHARLES EVANS all make interesting suspects in the mystery behind the identity of the key traitor. Well worth viewing.

• Hands Across The Pond

  bkoganbing2008-03-12

  Walk A Crooked Mile finds Louis Hayward as a Scotland Yard man and Dennis O'Keefe as an FBI agent finding themselves on the same case in their respective countries. Finding it convenient and necessary they join forces to track down Communist spies looking to steal data on an unnamed atomic project in southern California. Columbia Pictures was imitating the documentary style drama so popularized at 20th Century Fox by Henry Hathaway with such films as The House On 92nd Street, The Street With No Name, and Call Northside 777. Certainly Hayward and O'Keefe are a stalwart pair of agents defending their respective country's interests in the Cold War. This whole thing begins with a murder of an FBI man who was right in the middle of calling O'Keefe with some hot news about a suspected Communist he was trailing. O'Keefe is the head of security at a defense plant where atomic research is being done. It doesn't take a man versed in rocket science to know something big is afoot. Along the way Hayward comes into the case and the two of them track down the espionage that's been going on. Onslow Stevens as the brains and Raymond Burr as the muscle in the Communist cell are a fine pair of heavies. Atomic scientists suspected of the treason include Carl Esmond, Louise Allbritton, Art Baker, Lowell Gilmore and Charles Evans. One of them's a dirty red. When Burr gets the drop on Hayward and O'Keefe temporarily, they get some help from landlady Tamara Shayne. It's a good small role and she steals the film from all the rest. Cooperation on espionage cases is nothing new. We're seeing it now in the War on Terror. The Rosenberg case was started because of the original apprehension of Klaus Fuchs by British Intelligence who traced the activity to America. The Igor Gouzenko espionage case was solved by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Canada. By the way, one wonders if the unnamed atomic project they were all concerned about was the hydrogen bomb. Nuclear fusion was just starting to get out of the theoretical stage at this time. Walk A Crooked Mile is not a bad spy film. Another cinema tribute to the FBI in peace and war.

• Nicely Done Espionage Story.

  rmax3048232008-07-25

  "The House on 92nd Street" -- a paean to the FBI's anti-Nazi effort during the war -- begat a host of similarly structured films. There is some kind of MacGuffin, often involving microfilm, winding up "in the wrong hands" and being smuggled out of the country. There is the FBI at the center of the story, successfully unraveling the mystery. The FBI uses awesomely modern technology, such as spy cameras, one-way mirrors, hidden microphones, and files containing thousands of fingerprints. The FBI are business-like but they're good Joes too, wisecracking with one another without ever forgetting their mission. The enemy are cold-blooded, gruff, don't say hello to one another, never smile except wryly, sacrifice one of their own at the drop of a solecism, and are clever in the way that sewer rats are clever. Narration invariably by the stentorian baritone of Reed Hadley. Reed Hadley narrates this one too, coming several years after "The House on 92nd Street." At Lakeview Laboratory, somebody seems to be smuggling out confidential formulae about rockets, trajectories, nuclear physics, the secret ingredients of Coca-Cola, and such to a spy -- Russians, this time around, not Nazis -- who then PAINTS THEM into a landscape of San Francisco and ships them to another spy in London. And so on and so forth. Dennis O'Keefe is the agent in charge of the investigation. Louis Hayward is the Scotland Yard detective who uncovers the plot and comes to the states to work with the FBI. They both had leads in minor pictures but they were steady and reliable actors. Onslow Stevens plays a character whose name is Igor Braun. I leave it to you to guess whether this is one of the good guys or the bad guys. That's -- Igor -- Braun. Raymond Burr is a plump, bearded heavy. He doesn't make any jokes but neither do any of the other rats. He's satisfactorily sadistic. Tamara Shayne, as an innocent landlady, gives the best performance in the film. Art Baker, as head of the laboratory, has a voice made for radio. It's all terribly dated and formulaic but I kind of enjoyed it. Gordon Douglas keeps things moving along, nobody torpedoes the movie, the acting is okay, and the mystery is rather interesting, if implausible. Nice, minor job.