The Narrow Margin

A deadly cat and mouse game taking place largely aboard a train, Richard Fleischer’s The Naked Margin is often held up as the apotheosis of low-budget noir film making, prized for its lightening-speed pacing, innovative camera work, and economically effective production design (mostly train compartments, mostly at night). Even before the action moves to the train tracks, Fleischer’s opening sequences are bathed in noir expressionism as Det. Sgt. Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and his partner arrive at a dark apartment house for a secret rendezvous with Mrs. Frankie Neall (Marie Windsor); when her pearl necklace comes undone at the top of the stairs, the camera follows an errant pearl that drops to the floor below in an ominously Hitchcockian style. The widow Neall is a star witness willing to testify against the mob, and Brown is the cop assigned to get her to the California courtroom in one piece. Gangster hitmen board the train alongside the pair, which commences a series of revelations, twists, and close calls as the train races along. Windsor is fantastically feisty, McGraw is reluctantly righteous, and Jacqueline White plays a pretty passenger who catches the detective’s attention.