Pulp Fiction discussion

I happened to catch Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) awhile back on Netflix streaming and really enjoyed it. It stars Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney and is often compared to Laura, another fine noir film from Otto Preminger.

Dana Andrews plays a street wise, but overly aggressive tough cop Dixon, who investigates a murder at a gaming table. He accidentally kills a man who is going to be pinned for the murder. He scrambles to try to cover this up, but in doing so gets another man framed for the murder, cabbie Jiggs Taylor. It seems the more he tries to distance himself from this incident, the more complicated it becomes, especially when he tries to implicate a member of the mob. And, it seems that Dixon has fallen for Jiggs’ beautiful daughter, Morgan (Gene Tierney).

Andrews gives a fine performance and gives depth to his character Dixon, and strays away from any stereotypes. Tierney is beautiful as always. Karl Malden plays one of the detectives at the precinct.

A fine, perhaps unknown little noir to check out.

Anyone heard of this one?

Actually this is coming soon for our noir history, we're finishing 1949 with The Third Man this week and Where The Sidewalk Ends is one of 9 films we picked from 1950. With those three principals involved how can you go wrong?

It was originally a book, Night Cry, that was apparently incredible. checkout this non GR review if interested: http://vinpulp.blogspot.com.au/2008/0...

Thanks, didn't even know it was based on a book. I'll definitely check out the review.

seems like a forgotten gem, especially with 0 reviews 0 ratings on GR

Just seen it tonight, there's a moment where he puts the body in teh back seat of his car and a train stops on the bridge above him where the noir afficionado will say "he may as well have killed him in Times Square for all the witnesses he's created so far" and they'd be right but then the movie just screws with all your expectations. Great stuff but overall a little bit of a letdown.

Dixon is a perfect noir protagonist, doomed from the start but where he differs is that he seems to be in control of the situation rather than trying to catch up with things that are out of his control.

I forgot to mention that aside from being beautiful Gene Tierney didn't seem to do anything in this movie. They could have cast anybody for it.

But I guess teaming the couple from Laura was worth quite a lot of box office dollars from posters and trailers alone.

Tfitoby wrote: "I forgot to mention that aside from being beautiful Gene Tierney didn't seem to do anything in this movie. They could have cast anybody for it.

But I guess teaming the couple from Laura was worth ..."

Agreed. Her role was minimal in this one.