The Turning Point

In William Dieterle’s The Turning Point, childhood friends Jerry McKibbon (William Holden), a journalist, and John Conroy (Edmond O’Brien), a district attorney, are both investigating a crime syndicate run by mob boss Neil Eichelberger (Ed Begley). Things get complicated when McKibbon (1) discovers that Conroy’s policeman father (Tom Tully) might be working with the mob, and (2) falls in love with Conroy’s girl Mandy (Alexis Smith), a reluctant courtship that Dieterle executes quite sensitively (“We learned something we didn’t want to know”). The film for the most part eschews dramatic expressionism and has almost no score whatsoever, but its story is bleak: lead characters are murdered, innocent people are burned to death in a blaze, revered father figures are ruined by greed (“We’re weak human beings and every now and then the human equation smears everything up”). There’s plenty of tailing through the streets of Los Angeles, including via the famous Angel’s Flight funicular (R.I.P.), and the action culminates at a riveting boxing match where a thug named Red (Neville Brand) attempts target practice from way up in the arena’s rafters.