Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) would be Otto Preminger’s last film for 20th Century Fox, capping off a productive (if tumultuous) chapter in the director’s career. It’s a twisty, morally ambiguous crime picture, so much so that the screenplay (credited to the great Ben Hecht) underwent numerous rounds of revisions to satiate the censors. Stars Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney had each worked with Preminger several times before; of course, the pair starred together in Laura years earlier, but Andrews also appeared in Daisy Kenyon and Fallen Angel while Tierney had appeared in Whirlpool. Despite frequent clashes with studio head Darryl Zanuck, Preminger’s Fox films were all successful to one degree or another at the box office. Where the Sidewalk Ends was no different; frequently labeled a noir, Preminger’s unique sensibility complicates that too-easy definition with a healthy dose of docu-realism and melodramatic flourish. Whatever one calls it, the film conjures an entire universe of morally corrupt, violently unhinged criminals and cops, along with innocent bystanders trapped in a twisted game they have no control over.
Andrews, in his ramrod, straight-as-an-arrow mode, plays Det. Mark Dixon, introduced in the midst of a demotion from his superior officer. Dixon is a “good cop,” but keeps racking up complaints for use of excessive force. He hates criminals, but the main target of Dixon’s ire is local gangster Scalise (Gary Merrill), who’s successfully evaded conviction for years. When the dead body of out-of-town high-roller Harrison turns up in one of Scalise’s illegal gambling dens, Dixon is convinced that he’s finally got Scalise dead to rights. But no one will admit to witnessing the crime, sending Dixon to find the last man to see Harrison alive, Ken Paine (Craig Stevens). Dixon goes to confront Paine at a seedy apartment, ready and willing to beat a statement out of him. The two men tussle, and Dixon gives Paine a good wallop. Problem is, Paine has a steel plate in his head (courtesy of a war injury), and the blow kills him. In a fit of panic, Dixon puts on Paine’s coat and hat, sneaks the body out, and dumps it off into the river, assaulting a night watchman in the process. Dixon proceeds to arrange it so that it looks like Paine has left town to avoid the police, and that should be that.
But the plot thickens, as it is revealed that Paine’s estranged wife Morgan (Tierney) was with him at Scalise’s, and knows when they left. Further, Morgan’s father, Jiggs, had gone to Paine’s place the night of the murder to put a beating on him, recompense for Paine’s physical abuse of Morgan. Dixon has, then, been tasked with investigating a murder that he himself committed, but now has multiple people who can attest to when Paine was or was not at home, complicating the timeline Dixon has falsified. But the determined cop is so committed to Scalise’s guilt that he sets out to pin both Harrison and Paine’s murders on the gangster, all while slowly losing his composure as his lies threaten to be exposed. In short order, he’s falling in love with Morgan while Jiggs is pinched for Paine’s murder by an overzealous young lieutenant. Suddenly burdened by guilt — Dixon has no problem pinning the crime he committed on Scalise, but balks at an innocent man taking the fall — he must manipulate multiple pieces to implicate Scalise, deflect suspicion from himself, and also acquit Jiggs.
Preminger orchestrates some cracker-jack tension throughout all this, but also deftly illustrates the moral implications of Dixon’s single-minded quest for (what he believes is) justice. It’s a moral quagmire, and the weight begins to show on Andrews’ subtly expressive face (certainly, few actors could do more with what might generously be considered a “limited” range). Critic Chris Fujiwara notes that Preminger, in conversation with a journalist, stated, “a cop is basically a criminal,” and asked, “why do cops like to hit people? Because when they become cops, they satisfy an instinct for violence, only it becomes legalized violence.” And so, Where the Sidewalk Ends becomes a psychological study of obsession, a late plot twist reveals that Dixon’s father was a career criminal who got Scalise started in the business, at which point Dixon’s quest becomes an anguished attempt to eradicate his father’s surrogate son, while also denying some part of his own criminal essence. The bitter irony is, of course, that his obsession drives him to become that which he hates most.
There are a number of dualities present in the work of Otto Preminger, and how could there not be over the course of such a long, varied career? One could draw distinctions between his early, studio-bound works and the later, more expansive “epics,” with their large casts and location shooting. Then there’s the distinction between the black-and-white and color films, and of course between the squarish Academy ratio and widescreen scope (indeed, few directors mastered both the way Preminger did). Fujiwara suggests that we mostly read of Preminger in one of two ways, as “an important figure in the struggles against film censorship and the anti-Communist blacklist” or as a figure for “film buffs” who “know him as a great director of noir.” But Fujiwara suggests that more interest should be placed on Preminger as a “master of mise-en-scène and a symbol of cinematic fascination.” In The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris goes some ways toward explicating Preminger’s aesthetics; after relegating him to “the far side of paradise,” Sarris at least attempts to articulate what the films are doing visually, that the secret of Preminger’s style is “fairness,” or the “ambiguity of objectivity,” finding a technical corollary in Preminger’s frequent use of a “perversely objective” camera viewpoint.
Sarris’ construct is perhaps too broad, but Where the Sidewalk Ends suggests a starting place to investigate this idea of fairness and/or objectivity. Working with cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, a long-time collaborator who also photographed Laura and would go on to shoot several Billy Wilder films, Preminger favors long, fluid takes that keep multiple characters in the frame together. When Dixon is first introduced entering the police station, the camera moves alongside him before halting to take in an entire room of cops. Their frame adjusts slightly, subtly, to the left or right as different men speak, but there are no cuts or insert shots. Preminger indulges in more traditional noir stylization, too; Dixon’s disposal of Paine’s body is all dark, deep shadows, the angles of doorways and windows slicing through the image. Then there are Dixon’s various conversations with Morgan, captured with traditional shot-counter-shot rhythms. It’s a series of visual strategies that show how Dixon relates to the people around him at any given moment; his time with Morgan is relaxed, casual; at the police station and at the various crime scenes, he is part of the group, but also partially outside of it.
Then, there are moments where Preminger pushes these disparate modes up against each other; one brief sequence shows men entering the lobby of a building, the camera dollying alongside them as one man walks over to a phone. He dials, and we cut to a shot of a phone, enveloped in shadows on a table. We cut back to the caller, now framed in closeup, then back to the phone, now in a medium shot as a man answers it. A conversation ensues, and then Scalise enters through an unnoticed door behind the second man and takes the phone away from him. Preminger effortlessly displays an entire aesthetic toolbox in this otherwise unremarkable narrative moment: the so-called “objective” camera gives way to shadows, medium shots become closeups and then two-shots, and shallow depth of field gives way to deep focus, activating offscreen space. This is mise en scène! It’s one of cinema’s heartbeats that nonetheless feels increasingly like a lost, somehow even old-fashioned, skill in our age of flat digital modernity. Preminger’s films remind us that art can be both morally and visually complex.
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