Released in 1950 at the height of the film noir popularity, Mystery Street shows the life of a police investigator doing his job the only way he knows how, getting out on the streets and following up any piece of evidence or clue that could help solve the case. It reminded me a lot of All the President's Men where two reporters do the same thing trying to break a story that ends up being the Watergate scandal. The procedures seem archaic now watching them, but the story certainly gives a look at what old-fashioned police work entailed over 60 years ago.
Driving out of Boston to meet an acquaintance and deliver some important news, call girl/escort Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling) picks up a drunk man, Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson) drinking his worries away after his wife lost their baby in labor. Vivian leaves Henry stranded in the middle of nowhere to go meet her mystery man who then shoots her, buries her naked on the beach and dumps the stolen car in a deep pond. Six months pass, and the bones are found. A local detective working for the district attorney, Peter Moralas (Ricardo Montalban), leads the investigation with help from a Boston officer (Wally Maher) to follow what little evidence they have. A Harvard medical professor (Bruce Bennett) may be their only hope as he starts to analyze the found bones, hoping it leads to something, anything that could help solve the case.
Some reviewers at IMDB asked if this was the first ever police procedural movie? I know there were others before this (Jules Dassin's The Naked City was released in 1948), but it is clear this is one of the first of many that would follow. Think of an extended episode of Law and Order or CSI that runs about 90 minutes and this is the movie you'd get. The script isn't anything out of the ordinary, and the case itself is one you will have seen if you've watched even a few cop/lawyer TV shows. Still, there's a grittiness to the story that keeps it interesting. The acting is solid, director John Sturges doesn't waste time on any unnecessary subplots, and there are some very cool shots of Boston neighborhoods as the investigation moves along.
Once the investigation is laid out for Montalban's character, the story is nothing new, but the opening of the movie certainly gets points for originality. Sturges introduces a handful of characters without explaining much as to what's going on or who they are. Then, BAM! The cute blonde is dead, stripped and buried, and the story fast forwards 6 months to when a man walking on the beach sees bones poking out of the sand and reports them to the police. As a viewer, we're given just enough information to make us think we know what's going on, but let's face it, we're in the dark. We're a little bit ahead of Montalban and the police but not by much. We still don't know motive or who did it, making the somewhat worn story flow along at an easier clip.
Leading the cast, this is the Ricardo Montalban I am a fan of. We're not talking Fantasy Island here, we're talking a solid actor who was one of the first Mexican actors to hit it big in Hollywood. The early part of his career was defined by roles like this, a Hispanic character doing a job who also has to worry about prejudices and racial undertones from the people he's working with. There is just enough of a racial edge to the story and his character to make it interesting without being overbearing. The rest of the cast is solid if unspectacular, starting with Sally Forrest as Grace Shanway, Henry's wife who is sure her husband couldn't have done what he's being accused of. Bennett is good as the Harvard professor helping the investigation (even if his techniques are lost on everyone around him), Thompson is good at looking worried, Elsa Lanchester hams it up as Mrs. Smerling, the owner of Vivian's boarding house, Betsy Blair is a friend and neighbor of Vivian, and Edmon Ryan plays Harkley, a man Vivian ran across months before.
Watching the case and clues materialize, I couldn't help but think how police and law enforcement agencies caught anyone in a pre-computer era. All a killer would have had to do was start driving and don't look back. By the time the police figured out what was going on, he could be in Russia. Still, it's a cool look at an era that is most definitely a thing of the past. Now it is a movie so Montalban and Co. obviously get their guy. The finale is typical Sturges, solid action with some great camerawork, filming a chase scene in a train station and a rail yard as the murderer attempts to get away. An interesting noir overall with a mix of police procedural.
Mystery Street <---TCM trailer (1950): ***/****
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