Midnight Taxi

The dramatic opening scene of Eugene Forde’s Midnight Taxi in which a man intentionally pushes one car, then a second car, then himself over a ledge indicates the kind of intense yet efficient film the viewer is in for. The pusher, Lucky Todd (Harold Huber), intends to make his murder of a reporter (the first car) look like an accident (the second car) because the reporter had dirt on a counterfeiting ring led by Philip Strickland (Alan Dinehart). In the role of the hero, Brian Donlevy, who would go on to star in several big noirs (The Glass Key, 1942; Kiss of Death, 1947), plays Chick Gardner, an undercover cop playing the role of a taxicab driver in the hopes of infiltrating the dirty money gang, which uses cabbies like Lucky to transport the fake currency. Once Chick has earned their trust and been admitted into the gang (“You’ll find out soon enough,” he’s told when he asks why he needs a gun), he finds discreet ways of communicating back to the precinct while unexpectedly developing feelings for gang member Gilda Lee (Frances Drake), who suspects Chick may not be who he says he is. Forde and cinematographer McGill indulge in a variety of low and high angles, especially down by the waterfront where the shadows and fog add spectacular atmosphere that presages the expressionism that would come to define the noir aesthetic.