The Narrow Margin (1952)
We’ve somehow managed to initiate an informal “dangers on a train” mini-marathon here at Bowen’s Cinematic. Earlier in the month we covered Hitchcock’s peerless The Lady Vanishes, yesterday we looked at The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and so today is The Narrow Margin, the noir classic directed by genre veteran Richard Fleischer. The film’s box (courtesy of TCM Noir Set Vol. 2) actually likens Margin to Lady and it’s a testament to Fleischer and screenwriter Earl Felton’s work here that that comparison isn’t laughable, the two pictures would, in fact, make an ideal double bill.
If you’ll indulge me for a moment, The Lady Vanishes is a parfait: a light, masterful medley of tones. The Narrow Margin, on the other hand, is a big, gooey, probably under-baked chocolate brownie that really needs milk to properly dislodge from the throat. Both are delicious, but pleasurable in altogether different ways. Hitchcock’s film is graceful, The Narrow Margin is lean and merciless, a disarmingly blunt, nearly flawless thriller.
By minute five of Margin, we know the good guy, Det. Sgt. Brown (veteran Charles McGraw), the reluctant heroine, Mrs. Frankie Neall (Marie Windsor) and the task at hand, which is to get Mrs. Neall on a train to Los Angeles so she can testify against several of her dead husband’s associates. By minute twelve we’ve killed the good guy’s partner (obligatory even in the 1950s) and shoved the good guy and heroine aboard the train, which, needless to say, contains a few boarders that aren’t so sympathetic to Neal and Brown’s plight.
The remaining hour (totaling a svelte 71 minutes) is pure gravy: narrow escapes, double crosses, and red herrings. Charles McGraw is an ideal embodiment of square-jawed, incorruptible valor, the sort of Dick Tracy-Joe Friday thing that I normally have trouble relating to (they generally strike me as the sort that were bullies as kids, or Republicans as adults). McGraw gets around that, I think, because the film successfully stacks the deck: Brown’s odds are so laughably horrible as to render his determination poignant, even naive. Another key to Brown’s unexpected appeal is McGraw’s wonderful voice, that nothing new to the genre gravel cut with a slight, barely tangible, withheld pain: maybe Brown stepped on a tack before showing up for work that day.
The film’s humor humanizes Brown too, repeatedly scoring points off his self-righteousness. Mrs. Neall isn’t played as a clueless tramp, as many pictures would, she gets some good chewy tough girl dialogue, and McGraw, spittle nearly visible, throws it right back at her. There’s no heat in the movies like that great no-budget, 1950s noir heat, and Fleischer doesn’t go and ruin it by having his characters fuck.
Fleischer’s film is also a remarkable work of common sense, there is one great scene, toward the end, that finds a bad guy cornering a woman in her room and about to shoot the lock off. Many films, even good films, would have the bad guy blow the lock away without giving it the slightest of thoughts. THIS bad guy, however, looks around, sighs, realizes he can’t fire a weapon in a cramped train without stirring chaos, and instead appeals to the boy’s curiosity in the room next door.
The proper climax of the picture that follows a few minutes later is just as ingenious: Brown, powerless for the first time in the picture and still thrown from a clever twist earlier in the film, finds himself having to finally rely on the kind of person he thought he detested, and on the kind of fate he thought didn’t exist. Who knew a tired “don’t judge a book by its cover” sound bite could go down this good? You can’t tell me Hitchcock didn’t see it and, when no one was looking, didn’t smile.
★★★½
February 27th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I *love* this film.
I’ve probably seen it about fifteen times and it only gets better and better. Fleischer was a filmmaker who knew how to get to the meat of films that, if you were to judge them by their cover–a theme of this film, actually–you wouldn’t think would have much meat to eat.
“I’d give you the same answer I gave that hood, Mrs. Neal, but that would mean stepping on your face.”
Charles McGraw is one of those great naturally tough guy actors with a great screen presence and voice Hollywood is in short supply of these days.
Marie Windsor was a terrific “noir babe,” and the way she throws dialogue at her adversaries like throwing knives is always delicious.
Anyway, I love this film.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I can understand the fifteen times thing. Upon finishing the film, I almost just started it all over again, but I didn’t have the time. Narrow Margin is a part of the Bowen Library now though, so it will certainly be re-watched in the future. Not to belabor this point, but the TCM boxes really are terrific, and I have Vol. 3 sitting in the living room, waiting to be opened.