Appointment With a Shadow

Revolving around a has-been journalist soaking his failures in alcohol, Richard Carlson’s Appointment With a Shadow is a small, punchy noir that succeeds wonderfully at creating a gritty atmosphere stuffed with desperation and hopelessness. Featuring George Nader in a rare role that showcases his acting skills (and for which Van Heflin was initially cast), the film takes place in a single evening during which the alcoholic Paul Baxter (Nader) is given one final opportunity to save his career when his devoted girlfriend Penny Spencer (Joanna Moore) passes along a tip-off from her police officer brother (Brian Keith): the police are planning to arrest violent gangster Dutch Hayden (Frank DeKova) at a specific time and place that night, and Baxter could be the only reporter to cover it as long as he can avoid getting drunk. While Baxter struggles, craving by craving, to stay on the wagon, the greater challenge comes when Hayden turns the tables on the police and seeks to destroy Baxter’s reportage. Virginia Field plays Florence Knapp, Hayden’s romantic accomplice and nightclub stripper (“I enjoyed your show; you’ve got a good voice,” says Baxter, perhaps an inside joke about Nader’s homosexuality). Carlson and crew paint with thick noir brushstrokes, a jazz ensemble squawking from a back alley, nighttime lookout on a moonlit bridge, shadows draped like blankets muffling every last point of light.