An Undertaker doesn’t want to dig his own grave, so Capt. Barnaby decides to help the mortician bury his own Constitutional Rights! It’s a story about a cop killer on the lam, a witness who may be able to identify the killer, a bank robbery, a deceptive Count, a madame with a bevy of buxom beauties, and a kidnapped ingenue...not necessarily in that order. Arnold Levine directs this police procedural which takes place within 24 hours like a television program, pushing the story forward at a frantic pace. Laven supplies the energy but it’s DP Joseph Biroc that gives the film verve, utilizing deep focus two and three shot compositions, capturing deep looming shadows and interesting mise-en-scene which reveal details without quick cuts or obtrusive inserts. When Biroc resorts to an over-the-shoulder shot, he places the camera high angle so it looks down upon Capt. Barnaby (Edward G. Robinson) in close-up, which would diminish the Captain but instead allows Robinson to dominate the argument and get the last word.
Milquetoast mortician Jack Hartrampf (Porter Hall) has a girl on the side, so when he secrets away from her domicile at 1:30AM he stumbles upon a Grand Theft Auto in progress and a dying policeman. But Hartrampf fails to cooperate with police, not because he fears repercussion from the gangsters but because he doesn’t want his wife to know where he was! He has the nerve to exercise his Constitutional Rights and won’t say a word until he speaks with an attorney. This causes Capt. Barnaby and his Vice Squad much consternation. According to the film, the ends justify the means as the police discard the Rule of Law and become a Totalitarian authority who belittle Hartrampf’s legal representation and portrays him as a roadblock to Justice. To be clear, the police harass this timid man by having a secretary make a false allegation of sexual assault against him, and file drunk and disorderly by planting evidence on his person. Just so they can buy time to discover his paramour and parade her before him, so they can then blackmail him into making a “truthful” statement. When the third act is in high gear, Capt. Barnaby convinces Hartrampf to misidentify the shooter so they can leverage information from one of the gangsters! Even the matronly madame Mona Ross (Paulette Goddard) is arrested and held without probable cause, so she can cooperate with the investigation. And don’t even ask about warrants! These are Nazi tactics, yet it’s all portrayed casually as routine procedure.
The police are portrayed as the good guys but I’m not so sure after watching them decompose the Fourth Amendment and scatter the remains upon the corpses of our Founding Fathers.
Final Grade: C
