Gunman in the Streets (1950)

Posted by Marcus

The title is a misnomer, on at least two counts. First, a title like "Gunman in the Streets" tends to inspire images of a madman rampaging down public thoroughfares, brandishing a rifle and cutting down innocent victims at random. But what we have here instead is a man-on-the-run drama: Dane Clark plays Eddy Roback, a high-profile gangster who has escaped from police custody, and is now attempting to elude a city-wide dragnet, flee town (postwar Paris), and ultimately escape the country. For much of the film, Roback is shown hiding in back rooms, or ensconced in the shadowy back seats of taxi cabs; he is largely seen anywhere but "in the streets."

But the title also misleads insofar as it gives the impression that Clark plays the central role in the film, which is not the case. For all concerns, the lead role is that played by Simone Signoret, cast as Roback's girl Friday, Denise. Signoret first appears on screen following Roback's escape from the police, whereupon she quickly assumes the role of "front man" in his escape plot -- tending to such matters as arranging a hideout for him, and shuttling about Paris in an effort to raise the money needed to complete his getaway. She expends much effort trying to throw not only the police off Roback's trail (in particular, one older inspector with whom she seems to have a past), but also another of her beaus, a journalist whom she has furnished with Roback-related scoops in the past -- and who, in the wake of Roback's escape, seems to be growing accordingly suspicious of her suddenly erratic behavior -- perhaps too suspicious for his own good.

Shot on location in Paris, the film reportedly never received theatrical release in America. This is a shame for several reasons. For one, there is the unusual, and effective, combination of the French leading lady and supporting cast with the American leading man and director (Frank Tuttle), in a film set amongst authentic Parisian locales, belonging to so stereotypically "American" a genre as that of the gangster film. The man-on-the-run theme is found in many other noirs, of course, and the story here slightly resembles that of Raw Deal, with its love triangle consisting in part of an escaped criminal and his devoted lover. Signoret's Denise bears little relation to Claire Trevor's Pat beyond the devotion they both show to their men, however, for unlike the Dennis O'Keefe character in the Mann/Alton film, the object of Denise's interest is a brutal thug, thoroughly heartless and incorrigible. Nor is Denise an aging, world-weary woman with seemingly nowhere left to turn, as Trevor's character is; rather, she is relatively young, very charismatic, and apparently quite in demand, judging by the attention paid to her by both the journalist and the police inspector. In a reversal of noir convention, Roback is her "homme fatale," and in the final analysis, one is forced to ponder what exactly she is doing with him, and why she is willing to make herself an accessory to his crimes to the extent that she does. But such ponderings are not nearly enough to bring the film down -- far from it, in fact, for Signoret's performance is so strong that she not only holds the movie together, she arguably raises it to such a level that it becomes a convincing illustration of a aphorism of Oscar Wilde: "the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."