Review of Mystery Street (1950) by Lewis P — 25 Mar 2009

The film is interesting for two reasons: Its first ten minutes and its novelty as the first detective movie to involve forensics. What is interesting about the former is that it does not at all inform the latter. John Sturges' film makes us very aware of the setting of both, of Beacon Hill and Harvard University in Boston, though it does not at all inform either. Indeed, none of the characters complement each other in personality. A shockingly youthful Ricardo Montalban plays an Hispanic detective whose family is merely two or three generations since its immigration to the United States, and not for much reason other than that is what his cultural identity happens to be in association with the rest of the central characters. This is a very socioanalytically puppeteered scenario, which may be an ironic detraction from the realism it seems to want to suggest by both aforementioned draws of interest.

When I say its two interesting elements make it interesting, I don't mean that they are particularly interesting. I mean that they are interesting enough for the duration of the film, which fundamentally amounts to a by-the-numbers thriller, bearing little affiliation with film noir style, save for its opening minutes, in which a Hitchcockian device punctuates by turning out to be a capsule of slow, methodical revelation for the remainder of the movie, which thus continues by shifting its focus. Hitchcock was hardly a participant in the noir genre, but Mystery Street was released a decade before the master's arguably most influential thriller, Psycho, which substantially elaborated upon the motif presented by this movie's beginning, which gives it an atmospheric dankness that appears to promise us a noir. Perhaps it is a plus that the proceeding procedural to unravel the opening is more of a daylight mise en scene. Perhaps that serves as an obstruction against the detectives who seek to unearth the truth with which we the audience have been provided and a measure of cover for the suspects on whom we are two steps ahead of the law-serving protagonists, stressing the tension and maintaining our interest.

Were it not for these features of Mystery Street, this film would be immediately forgettable upon a languid, remarkably dull viewing, one that would have no purpose, enjoyable or no, to be repeated. Often when I see less widely applauded noir, I imagine so many different ways in which the given film could be intensified, not only by adding on but also in some subtler aspects by condensing. In this case, the filmmakers are adept at pace, but they have yet to expand on the quickly exhausted conventions of their era's B film genre. It wouldn't be long before the writing would come to be more complex and the technical aesthetics would afford a more affecting cinematic experience. Nonetheless, Mystery Street is a worthy little watch.