Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

He Walked by Night Blu-ray Movie Review

Dragnet '48.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 6, 2017

Quick — name a late forties film noir with a climactic showdown in an urban sewer system, shot with skewed perspectives swathed in chiaroscuro lighting. Of course the obvious answer is Carol Reed’s iconic The Third Man, but interestingly just a little less than a year before The Third Man was released, an American production offered a very similar sequence, albeit this time in the storm sewers of Los Angeles rather than the underground labyrinth of postwar Vienna. That probably coincidental connection has long given He Walked by Night a certain allure for film trivia buffs, but there’s another nugget of pop culture the film offers as well, courtesy of a supporting turn by one Jack Webb, whose role as one of the forensic experts on the police force who is attempting to chase down a cop killer and serial burglar evidently soon led to his now legendary work on Dragnet. There’s actually a kind of “just the facts, ma’am” ambience at hand in He Walked by Night which may have in and of itself suggested the way forward for Webb when he was thinking about how to detail the investigatory lives of everyday cops, and in fact there's a text card at the head of the film averring that while this is a fact based story, "the names have been changed to protect the innocent".

There are a number of interesting connections between He Walked by Night and ClassicFlix’s last release, T-Men. Both films came out of Eagle-Lion Films, both purport to be based on real life incidents (though T-Men hedges it bets by stating its story is a “composite”), both feature the stentorian tones of Reed Hadley offering narration, both were written (at least in part) by John C. Higgins, and perhaps most importantly both films were shot by John Alton. T- Men’s director Anthony Mann has long been cited as an uncredited contributor to He Walked by Night, even though the film is officially credited to Alfred L. Werker, and the very enjoyable commentary by Alan K. Rode and Julie Kirgo confirms Mann’s participation. That said, He Walked by Night is at least arguably a more visceral viewing experience than T-Men (at least it was for me), probably due mostly to the fact that He Walked by Night offers a chilling focal performance by Richard Basehart as a sociopath named Roy (with various aliases).

He Walked by Night even opens somewhat similarly to T-Men, with the kind of chiaroscuro lighting that made Alton a legend, and an obvious no-good-nik up to, well, no good, which leads to a shocking death of a police officer. That brings in the whole “procedural” aspect of the film, as the Los Angeles police attempt to track down the man who has killed one of their own thin blue line. Unfortunately for the police, Roy is one smart cookie, and a lot of the rest of the film documents how he is typically at least a step or two ahead of his pursuers.

T-Men may have suffered a bit in its portrayal of its heroes, and while main cop Marty Brennan (Scott Brady) isn’t exactly a paradigm of a conflicted psyche or anything, he’s at least marginally more compelling than the treasury agents in the Mann film, especially after his partner gets seriously wounded in a shootout with Roy. What really makes this film tick, though, are a coterie of really interesting and well done supporting performances, including some veritable bits. One of the film’s emotional high points is an almost negligible (in terms of screen time) moment dealing with the wife of that aforementioned partner, and there’s another great bit late in the film when Brennan, masquerading as a milkman in order to track down Roy, has a wacky interchange with an obviously addled elderly apartment dweller. But more fully developed supporting turns by Whit Bissell as a duplicitous “is he or isn’t he?” partner of Roy really supply a lot of the film’s kind of delicious subterfuge. Jack Webb is also interesting as the forensics expert, and is a little bit more animated than he tended to be as Joe Friday.

He Walked by Night Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

He Walked by Night is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. I frankly wavered a bit on how to best score this presentation, since it's more variable than ClassicFlix's pretty stellar looking release of T-Men. ClassicFlix's David Kawas shared that MGM provided the source for this, which Kawas stated "was not in the best shape", and that the label did significant further work on it. This has an overall softer appearance than T- Men, something that only increases in isolated moments, resulting in a certain variability in clarity and sharpness, as can be seen by sampling some of the screenshots accompanying the review. Like T-Men, there are a lot of opticals in this film (many dissolves, for example), and while those of course add to some of the variances, others accrue when there aren't any opticals at all, something that I assume points back to problematic source elements. A lot of this transfer looks very good indeed, if never quite at T-Men levels of excellence, but more persnickety videophiles should be prepared for occasional dips in sharpness. There are a few very minor blemishes that pop up, but nothing I'd term overly distracting. Contrast is generally very strong (if again at times slightly variable), helping to delineate some of those shadowy, mist strewn Los Angeles streets (and sewers) that Alton shot so evocatively. Grain generally looks natural and resolves organically. I'm scoring this a 4.0, perhaps partly on "effort", though I could see others feeling a 3.5 is more reflective of some of the variances on display.

He Walked by Night Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

He Walked by Night features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that is probably unavoidably narrow sounding, but which actually has a decent amount of "oomph" in terms of sound effects like gunshots or even violent kicks (Roy is not a nice guy and he doesn't suffer fools, or foolish accomplices, gladly). While Leonid Raab's score sounds okay if a bit brash, one of the interesting things about He Walked by Night is how certain key scenes play without music, or indeed without many effects at all, giving the film an almost "silent movie" ambience at times. Dialogue comes through the gauntlet of time perfectly well, with no problems to report.

He Walked by Night Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary features Alan K. Rode with Julie Kirgo, who offer a glut of background information on the production and cast members.


• Below the Surface: He Walked by Night Featurette (1080p; 11:47) features Rode and Kirgo again in an appealing overview of the film. Kirgo evidently is contracted only to work for labels or titles that reference evenings (yes, that's a joke).


• Image Gallery (1080p; 2:06)

Additionally, ClassicFlix includes a nicely appointed insert booklet with writing and archival stills.

He Walked by Night Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

ClassicFlix has really provided noir fans with a fantastic one-two punch with their releases of T-Men and now He Walked by Night. I know some fans of both films actually prefer T-Men, but for me, this "contest" has a clear winner, and it's this film. He Walked by Night is surprisingly exciting, given its kind of "by the numbers" procedural angle, and Basehart is absolutely riveting as a pretty nasty bad guy. Video here has occasional hurdles, and audio is probably unavoidably constrained by its age, but ClassicFlix has done an admirable job of spiffing up this film, which evidently fell into the public domain. Highly recommended.