THE LINEUP (Don Siegel, 1958)

The best of the noirs I’ve been seeing recently. It starts with an exciting set-piece – a driver steals someone’s suitcase from the port; the police chase him; and he ends up killed. It starts great and it doesn’t let up. The premise is that a gang is using innocent tourists returning from Hong Kong by ship to smuggle heroin by hiding the powder in their belongings (dolls, statues, silverware handles). Like many of the crime films of the period, the film makes great use of its on-location shooting. It’s a thrill just to see the San Francisco of this period. But Siegel does more with this. It’s like his characters are always caught on the edge of some barrier or some praecipe; highways made for freedom become dead-ends; aquariums where one is meant to gaze though glass prisons end up imprisoning; the wheelchair-bound are pushed to fly on air; steam that’s meant to revive and relax becomes a cover for death; etc. The choice of shots, camera movement, angle; everything seems economic, purposeful, meaningful; beautiful to see and exciting to watch. There’s a terrific mirror shot of murder in the mansion scene. Eli Wallach is a great psycho killer, simultaneously controlled and unhinged. Robert Keith is his more cerebral partner in crime. Perhaps one of the earliest spinoffs from radio  (1950-53), then to TV (54-60); with the film coming out in the midst of its run. The ad-line was ‘Too Hot…Too Big…for TV’.

The Mirror Shot:

José Arroyo