I Walk Alone

In Byron Haskin’s night club noir, I Walk Alone, Burt Lancaster plays another physically imposing loser, this time an ex-con named Frankie Madison who’s on a mission to claim his share of the wealth earned by his former business partner Dink Turner (Kirk Douglas) while Frankie was up the river. Though the film offers a fairly ordinary story and little technical innovation, Haskin creates memorable scenes around Lancaster’s physicality, including a brutal gang assault in a cat-strewn alley behind the club and a shootout in the dark at Dink’s mansion. Lizabeth Scott plays Kay, the chanteuse whose longtime crush on Dink disintegrates when she falls for Frankie over a private dinner arranged by Dink, and Wendell Corey plays Dave, the dutiful accountant whose torn loyalties place him in peril and culminate in a clever tracking shot on a dark, deadly street.