Review of Detective Story (1951) by Hallis B — 02 Mar 2009

A play which tells the story of a day in the lives of the several people who populate a police precinct translates more or less transparently between mediums, though with its theatrical pace results in a vigorous, enthralling drama with a solid, receptive cast. Kirk Douglas, playing the central cop, a brooding maverick who can't stand having to stop at the line between law and vengeance, is very intense in particular, the breadth of view of a crystallizing soul masqueraded by rigor and command, which makes for some delicate scenes with his wife, Eleanor Parker. The very natural William Bendix is one of the other officers in the precinct, a cop with a delicate sensibility, the clear contrast to the uncompromising protagonist. But the film's brightest highlights are the few moments dominated by the brilliant Lee Grant, whose character seems non-sequitary yet has a refreshing outside-world quality. Dense with lively exhibitions of the sort of devil-may-care influx that transits and languishes through a workday of plainclothes detectives, it is a police procedural not in the traditional sense. There is no central case over which our detectives toil. There is simply an allotment of arrests and conflicting views on the confines of police work.

While this Edgar-winning cop drama stays in effect a filmed play, William Wyler uses the innate limitations of such a project as a creative outlet, as well as his widely known grating approach multiple retakes. The cooped up setting is not just a space where all manner of characters eyeball each other and interplay. It complements the lurking gist of the story's thematic elements and overall to the film's dramatic impact. The staging of the individual scenes, which a lot of the time plays on foreground-background relationships, is intensified by Lee Garmes's deep-focus cinematography, a consistent device used by Wyler throughout his body of work no matter how much he diversifies in genre and tone.

The core of Wyler's consistency throughout his tremendous career is his insistence on emotional truth, thus his enraging approach to directing actors, and thus his track record with directing Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning performances. Wyler's discretion of angle exposes or intimates more character than the last and apprehends the decisive sensibility to give significance to the experience of seeing the film. He didn't coin anything new. He didn't use unprecedented angles or logistically fussy dolly takes. He's discerning from the acknowledged bill of fare of long shot, medium shot and close-up as the atmosphere of the scene calls for.