Railroaded! (1947)
Directed by Anthony Mann

Film Review

Today, the director Anthony Mann is best remembered for a string of classic westerns, notably those starring James Stewart (Winchester '73, The Far Country, The Man from Laramie) and his subsequent historical epics El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).  Before all of this, however, Mann cut his directorial teeth with a series of low budget but generally well-regarded film noir thrillers, the best of which include T-Men (1947), Raw Deal (1948) and Side Street (1950).  Railroaded! was one of Mann's first forays into the murky world of film noir, made on a shoestring for the Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, with absolutely no expense spared.

Even by the standards of the 1940s American B-movie, Railroaded! looks cheap, with sets so flimsy you wonder if they will last to the end of a scene and back-projection so poorly executed that you could mistake this for the cruellest of parodies.  The hopelessly formulaic script contains just about every B-movie cliché, archetype and plot contrivance known to man and the acting (with one notable exception) is just as lacking in inspiration.  It says something about Mann's potential that he was able to rise above all this and somehow pull out of this tank of mediocrity a film which, whilst not perfect, manages to hold the attention and provides a reasonably entertaining viewing experience.  Railroaded! may look ropey compared with Mann's later, fully-fledged films noirs, but it does have some saving graces.

The extreme high-contrast photography gives the film the cordite-scented atmosphere it badly needs to sustain its humdrum and generally implausible plot, as well as helping to hide the shoddy production values and even shoddier acting contributions (from a clearly unmotivated supporting cast).  In some ways, the paucity of the budget and lack of gloss prove to be somethimg of an asset, giving the film a grittiness and crudeness that are well-matched to its hardboiled content, and nothing helps the mood of a film noir more than a set heavily draped in shadows.  The film's one killer weakness is its lack of interesting or believable characters (both the poor script and even poorer acting are to blame for this), but John Ireland's deliciously vile villain makes up for this - with a vengeance.

Ireland obviously relishes playing the bad guy and has no difficulty stealing every scene like a duvet-hogging thug as the über-smooth gangster whose hobbies include beating up his girlfriends and scenting his bullets with their perfume.  If only the other characters were half as interesting as Ireland's dastardly Duke Railroaded! could easily have been a classic, but the best that co-stars Sheila Ryan and Hugh Beaumont can manage is to say their lines without inducing the audience to slip into a deep coma.  Anthony Mann would go on to far better things than this in due course, but you can only admire the dedication he shows in trying to prevent Railroaded! from ending up as the disaster it could so easily have been.

Film Synopsis

With the help of his girlfriend, Clara Calhoun, smalltime hoodlum Duke Martin raids an illegal bookmaking joint masquerading as a beauty parlour.  As he makes his getaway in a stolen laundry van, Duke shoots dead a police officer, but his accomplice Kowalski is wounded and captured.   The obvious suspect for the cop's killer is the van's owner Steve Ryan, and fake eyewitness testimony from Clara and Kowalski gives the police what looks like an open and shut case.   Detective Mickey Ferguson is sceptical of Steve's guilt, however, and sets out to find the real culprit.  Meanwhile Steve's sister, Rosie, takes a shine to Duke and enlists his help in trying to clear her brother's name...