Detective Story, 1951

starring Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, and William Bendix. Based on Sidney Kingsley's 1949 play and directed by William Wyler.

Detective Story deserves all the praise it gets. I especially appreciate Wyler's direction and the camera work. The film works much like the play must have: for example, there is an exaggeration involved with each performance that must have been necessary on stage but was not necessary for the performances in front of a camera. Rather than disrupt and disturb, the acting transforms simple, ordinary characters--detectives, witnesses, criminals, victims--into iconic representations of us all though we aren't all cops, dames, and bad guys.

I think that Wyler may have had Jules Dassin's The Naked City in mind. Whereas Dassin structured his film as a documentary that is interrupted by an engaging crime story--stories like this happen everyday in the city and I'm uncovering one with my camera--Wyler dispenses with the documentary frame and permits the dialogue and action to display its own immediacy and authenticity. Dassin's film is not inauthentic, but it does permit an imagined distance between characters and events in the film. Such a distance permits a less involved viewing experience. In other words, an audience may find more at stake while watching Detective Story than The Naked City. Detective Story has a here-and-now feel to it--a tone that theatre well-perceived is always good at portraying.

For 1951, the film seems significant. Detective Story is released in the midst of Film Noir's heyday, yet Wyler's film is not a film noir. Or better yet, it is a stripped-down film noir, stripped down to its language and character, stripped of its expressionistic style. We can use Wyler's film and its contrast to outstanding film noir to learn a lot about what was being said in these films and how that affects the way we tell similar stories now.