The Narrow Margin . Austin Chronicle . 07-14-97

The Narrow Margin

DIRECTED BY: Richard Fleischer

REVIEWED: 07-14-97

Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Queenie Leonard, Jacqueline White

Detective Brown (McGraw) is assigned to pick up Mrs. Neil (Windsor), a mobster's widow, and transport her by train across country to testify before a grand jury. Before even reaching the station, Brown's cigar-chomping partner is blasted by the mob. On board the train, syndicate thugs try to bribe and intimidate Brown, while he warms up to Mrs. Sinclair (White). Brown is disgusted with his assignment and Mrs. Neil's callous gun-moll attitude, but refuses to be swayed by the money waved under his nose. The thugs find Mrs. Neil and kill her, but she turns out to be a police woman sent as a decoy (and also to test Brown's integrity).... Marie Windsor (a former Miss Utah) plays Mrs. Neil to trampy perfection and looks fine indeed in a black slip, while square-jawed noir icon McGraw rattles off tough-as-nails dialogue and administers a brutal ass-whuppin' to a mob goon in a Pullman compartment. The Narrow Margin capitalizes on its limited budget by confining most of the action inside the train, using fine shadowy camera work in the corridors to set up a nice sense of claustrophobia. Scholars now consider this picture to be a minor classic, but at the time it was simply a concise, modest, un-pretentious crime/suspense "B" picture. It wasn't until years later that the dang French elevated movies like this by coining the phrase film noir. The great thing about noir is that it became such a popular visual style in post-WWII Hollywood; there's a near-inexhaustible vault of noir-type films that spans several genres. Director Fleischer (son of animation pioneer Max Fleischer) honed his no-nonsense sensibilities in a lengthy career that would go on to include such varied films as The Boston Strangler, Soylent Green, Mr. Majestyk, The New Centurions, and Fantastic Voyage. Forget its tepid 1990 remake; this is the real thing, with a killer hard-boiled screenplay, lots of plot twists, and great performances by Fifties character actors.

--Jerry Renshaw

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