The Street with No Name (1948)

The success of The House on 92nd Street set a whole new trend of film making for 20th Century Fox. For the rest of the forties, that studio had a lot of success with a certain kind of documentary/noir type film.

In The Street With No Name, Lloyd Nolan repeats his characterization of FBI inspector George Briggs. Briggs, who used an undercover operative in The House on 92nd Street, uses another one to track down a gang of thieves in the mythical Center City in midwest USA.

The undercover guy is Mark Stevens and the gang he finds an infiltrates is led by Richard Widmark in his second film. Widmark's not a psycho like he was in Kiss of Death, but he's just as mean and vicious.

Widmark also has a pipeline into the local police and a real cute gimmick in recruiting members for his gang. It's a race against time for Stevens to track down the informer before he's informed on. Director Bill Keighley keeps the suspense at a fever pitch in this one.

Keighley also has a good feel for the flavor of the seamy world of Center City where Widmark operates from. This is noir at it's best.