Gunman in the Streets

A rare French production in English with an American lead, Frank Tuttle’s Gunman in the Streets begins and ends with intense gunfight sequences, bookends to a day in the life of criminal and army deserter Eddy Roback (Dane Clark) after his escape from the police van transporting him to prison. Roback tracks down his mistress (and moll) Denise Vernon (Simone Signoret) and asks her for money so he can cross the border into Belgium, which she sets out to obtain from underground contacts while Eddy stays in the apartment of photographer Max Salva (Michel Andre) who, it turns out, was partially to blame for Eddy’s conviction. Robert Duke plays Denise’s generous suitor Frank Clinton, who agrees to help her despite knowing that she is still in love with Eddy, and Fernand Gravet plays police inspector Dufresne, always one step behind the pair as they race to the border. Often underappreciated, Clark does well here as Eddy and is given scenes possibly inspired by noirs from the previous year or two: his crazed shouting finale a la Cody Jarrett in 1949’s White Heat, his removal of a bullet from his own flesh a la 1948’s He Walked By Night. Forced to move to France to avoid the communist witch hunt in the US, Tuttle minimizes Parisian glamor and amps up the anxiety through low-key lighting, dark alleys, and empty streets.