ABANDONED (director: Joseph Newman; screenwriters: Irwin Gielgud/William Bowers; cinematographer: William Daniels; cast: Raymond Burr (Kerric), Frank Cady (City Editor), Jeff Chandler (Chief McRae), Dennis O'Keefe (Mark Sitko), Gale Storm (Paula Considine), Meg Randall (Dottie Jensen), Will Kuluva (Little Guy DeCola), Marjorie Rambeau (Mrs. Donner), Jeanette Nolan (Major Ross), Mike Mazurki (Hoppe), William Page (Scoop), David Clarke (Harry), Bert Conway (Delaney), Perc Launders (Dowd), Clifton Young (Eddie), Ruth Sanderson (Mrs. Spence), Earl Smith (Sammy, Shoeshine boy), Edwin Max (Morrie, The Bookie), Virginia Mullen (Nurse Sully), 1949)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
"Abandoned" is a melodramatic noir story that shows the dark side to Los Angeles and what happens to those who come there from a small-town and get absorbed in its sordidness and can't escape from their own hidden vices. It is especially noteworthy for the beautiful work of the cinematographer, William Daniels, and the sinister look he gives to the city; and, the cynicism of the perpetrators, the news media, the police, and the victims. Its pulse is taken out of the shock stories that appear daily in the newspapers. This story is almost-like a documentary expose on the baby-broker racket.
Paula Considine (Gale) has recently come to L.A. to locate her missing sister and baby girl. She is met at the police desk by a sharp reporter looking for a story, Mark Sitko (Dennis), who takes an interest in the case because he is attracted to her. He decides to help track her sister down, even though Paula is reluctant to have him help because she is afraid that this will appear in the newspaper and that might embarrass the family.
When followed by a corrupt private investigator, Kerric (Burr), Sitko's attention grows as he realizes there might be something more to this story than meets the eye, as he senses something shady is going on. Kerric tells them that he has been hired by Paula's father to trail her and get the location where her sister is. Sitko's classical noir line to him is, "You going legitimate is like a vulture turning vegetarian." This coincidence, of Kerric being hired by Paula's father, was too unbelievable to be readily accepted. It is never explained how Kerric was hired by the father. The only thing that was explained was that the older sister ran away because she didn't get along with the father and things became worst when her mother died.
Through Sitko's help, she finfds out that her sister turns up dead in a stolen car from carbon monoxide, and her death is ruled as a suicide; but, Paula can't believe it, especially since her sister doesn't drive. Sitko takes the story to his friend Chief McRae (Chandler), who tells him that if he can come up with something to back up his story of babies being sold illegally, he will use his police powers to help him.
When Kerric is spotted by Sitko trailing them, they try to lose him, as they are busy finding a number of sources that leads them to where her sister might have gone to sell her baby. At a Salvation Army Home, they discover that her sister stayed there and was friends with another pregnant girl, Dottie (Meg). She tells them that a lady with a cane visited them here and paid for her sister's expenses and made arrangements to buy the baby from her, but your sister changed her mind and that was the last she heard from her.
Sitko and Paula cook up a scheme to entrap the baby brokers, as the police set-up a stakeout. Dottie volunteers to have the lady with the cane, the head of the baby-selling organization, Mrs. Donner (Marjorie), think that she is willing to sell her baby. Sitko poses with Paula as the couple who will buy the baby.
The henchmen of Mrs. Donner are ruthless: Little Guy DeCola (Kuluva), her lead henchman, the one responsible for killing Paula's sister, is someone who relishes being nasty to anyone he comes into contact with. His underling, Hoppe (Mazurki), carries out his boss's violent orders. This all comes to light when the slimy Kerric, getting nervous about the police on the trail, double-crosses the organization and tries to sell the sister's baby to Paula, and is found beaten to death. It is shown that Paula is cynical enough about the law to do anything, even if it is not completely ethical, to get hold of her sister's baby, even go along with Kerric's scheme to buy her sister's baby.
The once typical crime story from Hollywood has now taken a more forlorn look at how people really are. Fake niceties are not allowed in this highly charged atmospheric B&W film. The cub reporter under Sitko is told to work on his day off, it would be good for him. Kids in the park playing "Cowboys and Indians"are given a dollar by Sitko to tie-up Kerric as an Indian, which they do without any questions. A nurse becomes part of the baby brokers, forgoing her nursing duties without any concern.
What comes through are the film's conservative aims, as the reporter and his soon-to-be wife, share the same middle class values their fellow postwar American citizens shared at the time. He advances on his job, having good contacts with a police force that is helpful to him; and, his desire to marry the nice small-town girl before she is corrupted by the big city, comes to fruition. He will marry her and usher her away to, in all probability, some kind of suburban lifestyle. Sitko has no vices such as the bottle, womanizing, and gambling. He's about as clean-cut as a noir protagonist gets in these sort of films. The only thing that keeps him noir, is his cynicism and willingness to do anything to get what he wants. He's a wise-guy.
The ones who imbue the film with its usual noir credentials are the heavies: Burr, whose only thought about being involved with murder was, "I should have stuck to blackmail and petty larceny." Kuluva, who would eagerly torture someone, he even enjoys burning his victim's armpits. And then there is Mazurka, who fits the description of the classical noir heavy to a tee; and, Rambeau, who represents the evil in a woman who can't find satisfaction in family life and instead seeks to attack it by representing herself as something she is not, an upstanding citizen. Her greed and malevolence show that she is not only a cripple in appearance but her soul as a woman is also crippled, and what could be more noir than that impression of her!
REVIEWED ON 1/9/2000 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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