Where the Sidewalk Ends
Director: Otto Preminger
Year Released: 1950
Rating: 3.0
Hardcore police officer Dana Andrews - given to smacking baddies with extreme prejudice - gets himself in one hell of a dilemma: he accidentally kills a suspect in a murder case and tries to cover up his tracks by disposing the body himself, but in doing so, inadvertently implicates the (innocent) father of his new gal pal (Gene Tierney). Yikes. Unravels nicely - with only a minor number of contrivances - by screenwriter Ben Hecht, and cautiously juggles the Andrews character's moral conundrum - as for the dark feel and sense of claustrophobia, that's solely Preminger's doing - his career may have been wildly inconsistent (and controversial), but he really nailed this one.
