VICE SQUAD (1953)

Here’s Edward G. Robinson during his ‘Pinko’ Purgatory days, surviving Hollywood’s ‘Grey List’ making third-tier progammers.  (Hardly a Communist Radical, Robinson ticked enough boxes to look suspicious: New Deal supporting Liberal Jew, New York theater background; Premature Anti-Fascist, yes, a real term of the time, as in being against Hitler pre-Pearl Harbor or supporting Spanish Civil War Republicans); and as a cultural intellectual.*)  Directed by Arnold Laven, his second feature before life in serial tv, it’s a modest police procedural, less bad than dull.  And forget that Vice Squad come-on title, instead one very full day in the life of Chief Detective Eddie G., solving a fistful of cases.  Murdered cop; Kidnapping, Marriage bunko; Mental case; Drunk tipster; it might be a pilot for a tv series:  Edward G. Robinson is KOJAK!  I’d watch.  With flat overlit mastershots indoors (for economy) and a bit of dark menace on exteriors, cinematographer Joseph Biroc the only tech here to reach A-list status.  Not rising, second-billed Paulette Goddard, in decline after being dropped at Paramount in ‘49, her fast-fade hard to figure out.  (Also Grey Listed?)  Of the supporting players, Lee Van Cleef makes a mark, his hatchet face perking things up.  There’s even a bit of suspense toward the end when a few cases climax with a single endgame.  But still forgettable.

LINK:  *The real deal that: Robinson’s art collection uncomfortably modern by Hollywood’s stultifying standard.  Here’s a MoMA catalogue from 1953 (the year this film came out), forty paintings loaned: Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Corot, Lautrec, Modigliani, Monet, Gauguin, Degas, Chagall, Delacroix, Cezanne - all the usual suspects.  https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_3301_300062120.pdf

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Three years later, ultra-conservative C.B. DeMille ‘cleansed’ Eddie G. hiring him for a juicy supporting role in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’56.