The Narrow Margin (1952)

Calificación de los usuarios:

7.9/10   

Director:

Richard Fleischer

Escritores:

Earl Felton (screenplay)
Martin Goldsmith (story) ...

Fecha de Lanzamiento:

4 mayo 1952 (USA)

Género:

Crimen | Cine Negro | Drama

Frase comercial:

'THAT BULLET'S MEANT FOR ME!" - Suspense every speeding second aboard a stream-lined limited...as syndicate killers seek to find and silence mystery woman headed for the Grand Jury!

Plot:

A woman planning to testify against the mob must be protected against their assassins on the train trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Plot Keywords:

Train | Trial | Gangster | Nail File | Sleeping Car

Premios:

Nominated for Oscar.

Comentarios de los usuarios:

A dark ride that's maybe the best passenger-train thriller of them all

Reparto

Charles McGraw	...	Det. Sgt. Walter Brown
Marie Windsor	...	Mrs. Frankie Neall
Jacqueline White	...	Ann Sinclair
Gordon Gebert	...	Tommy Sinclair
Queenie Leonard	...	Mrs. Troll
David Clarke	...	Joseph Kemp
Peter Virgo	...	Densel
Don Beddoe	...	Det. Sgt. Gus Forbes
Paul Maxey	...	Sam Jennings
Harry Harvey	...	Train conductor

También conocida como:

The Target (USA) (working title)
Testigo accidental (Argentina) (Spain) [es]

Duración:

71 min

País:

USA

Idioma:

Inglés

Color:

Negro y Blanco

Relación de Aspecto:

1.37 : 1

Sonido:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Clasificación:

Australia:PG | Norway:16 | Finland:K-16 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:Approved (PCA #14631)

Locaciones de Filmación:

Santa Fe Railroad Depot - 1170 W. 3rd Street, San Bernardino, California, USA

Compañía:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivialidades:

In preference to removing various walls from the sets, director Richard Fleischer decided to make extensive use of a handheld camera that could be brought into rooms; this was one of the first films to do so. To save money the train sets were rigidly fixed to the floor, and the camera was moved to simulate the train rocking.

Errores:

Errores cometidos por los personajes (posiblemente errores deliberados por los cineastas): When the character of nine year old Tommy Sinclair (Gordon Gerbert) first appears, his traveling nurse clearly calls him "Tony". For the rest of the film he's called "Tommy", the character's official name.

Citas:

Walter Brown: I love it - so get to the point.

Conexiones de Película:

Referenced in Silver Streak (1976)

A dark ride that's maybe the best passenger-train thriller of them all

Trains have it all over ships and planes when it comes to creating a microcosm. On an airplane, everybody's crammed together; nobody can sneak on or leave (except by parachute or defenestration). An ocean liner has its private staterooms and public spaces, but, again, is an island, entire onto itself. But trains stop regularly to take on and disgorge passengers, and they run along their fixed and earthbound course, with windows looking out on rivers and highways, at big cities at high noon and small towns in the dead of night. And so they've always been the preferred vehicle for suspense, with countless thrillers using the rails as their setting. One of the tautest and most toothsome, in its modest, low-budget way, is Richard Fleischer's The Narrow Margin.

It opens in Chicago, where a pair of Los Angeles police detectives are to escort the widow (Marie Windsor) of a recently slain gang leader back to the coast to testify before a grand jury. She's a hard case (`a 60-cent special...poison under the gravy'), and guarding her is a dangerous job. Sure enough, one of the cops takes a fatal bullet in the stairway of her low-rent apartment house (she shows scant sympathy). Windsor's finally smuggled aboard the train, in a Pullman car's locked compartment adjoining that of her custodian Charles McGraw. Almost certainly, one or more mobsters followed her. It's up to McGraw to smoke them out before they kill Windsor, who knows too much. But he slowly learns that some vital information has been deliberately kept from him....

Fleischer makes inventive use of the jostling in the cramped passageways – and of the all but vanished rituals of club cars and dining cars. He packs the train with seasoned character actors, notable among them Jacqueline White, Paul (`Nobody loves a fat man') Maxie, and Don Beddoe. The closely worked script, by Earl Fenton (based on a novel by Martin Goldsmith, who also penned the original material for Detour), doesn't stint on gaudy patter for them to spout (it's a moveable feast of salty epigrams).

Best of all, The Narrow Margin offers the addictive Marie Windsor her meatiest role, showcasing her tough-gal talents. Rolling her huge and extraordinary eyes, she aims her exhaled smoke like a stream of deadly gas and hard-boils her lines into hand grenades (to McGraw: `This train's headed straight for the cemetery. But there's another train coming along – a gravy train. Let's get on it.'). It's one of Hollywood's more perplexing secrets why Windsor toiled exclusively, with the possible exception of her Sherry Peatty in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, in the B-movie ghetto. But she helped make that ghetto the liveliest part of Tinsel Town.