USA 1941-1950 Crime Film Noir Joseph H. Lewis

Joseph H. Lewis – The Undercover Man (1949)

adminDecember 18, 2020

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“The Inside Storyo of a Great U.S. Criminal Investigation”
Frank Warren is a treasury agent assigned to put an end to the activities of a powerful mob crime boss. The agent struggles to put together a case but is frustrated when all he finds are terrified witnesses and corrupt police officers. Although most informants end up dead, Agent Warren gets critical information about the mob from an unlikely source.

The film was based on an article entitled “He Trapped Capone,” the first part of the autobiography Undercover Man by Federal Agent Frank J. Wilson, which was serialized in Collier’s in 1947. (Wikipedia)

Quote:
“A superior crime thriller in the semi-documentary style beloved by Hollywood in the late 1940s…[the film] achieves an authenticity rare in the genre. Perhaps even more impressive is the acknowledgment that mob crime affects not only cops and criminals, but innocents too: witnesses are silenced, bystanders injured. And Lewis – one of the B movie greats – directs in admirably forthright, muscular fashion, making superb use of Burnett Guffey’s gritty monochrome camerawork.”
(Timeout)