I Walk Alone

Once again, I was looking through the offerings on the various streaming services, and found that one of the PlutoTV channels (which, being owned by one division of Paramount, has the rights disporportionately to Paramount stuff). A movie that was already halfway through where I'd probably heard the title but had never seen it was I Walk Alone. Thankfully, Pluto is one of the services where you can tune in to something already on and watch from the beginning, so that's what I did in order to be able to do a review of it.

As the movie begins, Frankie Madison (a very young Burt Lancaster) is walking into Grand Central, having just gotten off a train. Calling out for him to pick him up is an old friend, Dave (Wendell Corey). As a nice lighting trick puts the shadows from the grille of one of the ticket agents' windows on the floor, Frankie realizes he's never going to escape such bars: it's a sign that he's just gotten out of prison after 14 long years.

As Dave takes Frankie to his new digs at one of those long-stay hotels that populated movies up through the 70s, Frankie asks about a mutual friend, Noll "Dink" Turner (Kirk Douglas). They were all friends before Frankie went off to prison, and in the meantime Turner has made a name for himself, opening up a swanky nightclub and taking on a nightclub singer Kay Lawrence (Lizabeth Scott) who's getting her picture in the press. Frankie wonders why Noll never showed up to see him in prison, and would desperately like to see Noll again.

Cut to the business office of Noll's nightclub. Dave works as Noll's accountant, figuring out how to keep the books balanced while paying as little tax as legally possible. Noll, for his part, has been expecting Frankie, as he knows Frankie is going to be ticked off. He knows that Frankie will believe he's entitled to something after 14 years in prison, and Noll gives off vibes that he's going to try to get away with giving Frankie as little as possible. To that end, he employs the assistance of Kay to try to pump Frankie for information.

This is important not just for Noll, who wants to find out what Frankie is planning, but also for the viewer, as it's an effective way to put in the flashback necessary to show the characters' back story and give motivation to all the characters. Fourteen years earlier, before Frankie went off to prison, was the late stages of Prohibition. Frankie and Noll were running liquor over the Canadian border into the US, when a rival gang decided to try to hijack the load. It led to a murder and the two splitting up, before making a handshake agreement to share everything 50-50. As we already know, Frankie took the rap for the death of the rival gangster, and now he wants his 50 percent.

Except that Noll has been very shrewd in his business dealings. With the end of Prohibition, the old club they had run together fell on hard times, so Noll dissolved it and set up a new club, the one he currently owns. And he got Dave to push some papers in front of Frankie so that he wouldn't have a share of the new organizations Noll founds after the old club folded. Dave has also been exceedingly good at setting up all the finances so that there's no way Frankie can get back into the club. And Noll is more than willing to use violence if Frankie pushes too far.

Meanwhile, Kay had been thinking Noll had the hots for her, only to have her hopes crushed when she learns he's after another woman. So she's willing to get closer to Frankie. This is important because one Frankie does start pushing to far and Noll has his underlings beat the crap out of him, Dave, who was also there, gets shot. Frankie, with his history, is an obvious suspect....

I Walk Alone makes me think a bit about Johnny O'Clock, which I blogged about back in November, as the two movies have some thematic similarities in the idea of a business partnership gone wrong. The both also have a lot of style covering up what isn't really a lack of substance so much as it is that the formula we're given is really nothing new. That is, I think, part of why I Walk Alone got mixed reviews when it was originally released. All three leads show a lot of potential, but this was before Douglas and Lancaster became big stars and legends. Contemporary critics wouldn't have known what the future held for the two actors, of course.

The result is that I Walk Alone is a movie that's eminently watchable, but decidedly not in the class of some of the great movies of the noir cycle, and with reason. It's also a film that would fit right in on Noir Alley, although as far as I am aware Eddie Muller has never shown it.