He Walked by Night

1948
Approved
1h 19m

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

YOUR RATING

This film-noir piece, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who shoots and kills a cop.

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Film Noir Heist Crime Thriller

This film-noir piece, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who shoots and kills a cop.This film-noir piece, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who shoots and kills a cop.This film-noir piece, told in semi-documentary style, follows police on the hunt for a resourceful criminal who shoots and kills a cop.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 win total

Pete Hammond
(uncredited)

Dolores Castelli

Witness
(uncredited)

George Chan

Chinese Suspect
(uncredited)

Garrett Craig

Patrolman
(uncredited)

John Dehner

Assistant Bureau Chief
(uncredited)

Ann Doran

Dispatcher
(uncredited)

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Technical advisor for the film was Sgt. Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles Police Dept. During the course of shooting, he fell into conversation with Jack Webb, then the star of radio's "Jeff Regan, Private Investigator", who had a small part in the film. Wynn suggested that Webb do a radio series based on actual police files. Thus was born the idea for "Dragnet," which debuted on NBC radio about four months after this film was released.

Goofs
When Martin flees from his bungalow into the sewer system, the first shot shows him running with a flashlight and a bag in his hand. This is the same shot as used earlier on in the film after he started robbing liquor stores. (In this later scene, he did not have a bag when he fled the bungalow nor when he entered the sewers.)

Quotes
Narrator: And so the tedious quest went on. Sergeant Brennan wore out his shoes and his patience going from police station to police station, checking photos until his eyes were blurry. For police work is not all glamour and excitement and glory. There are days and days of routine, of tedious probing, of tireless searching. Fruitless days. Days when nothing goes right, when it seems as if no one could ever think his way through the maze of baffling trails a criminal leaves. But the answer to that is persistence and the hope that, sooner or later, something will turn up, some tiny lead that can grow into a warm trail and point to the cracking of a tough case.

Connections
Edited into The Big Combo (1955)

User reviews121

Review

Featured review

7/10

Not influenced by Carol Reed

Watching this movie, which is very good if dated, I thought of The Third Man, too. But it was made BEFORE the Carol Reed film, so can hardly be said to have borrowed heavily from it. In fact, I wondered if Reed had been influenced by Werker! The Third Man is an incomparably better film, one of my Desert Island movies. But He Walked By Night was a competent and at times really interesting flick. The scene where the robbery victims collaborate on building the villain's face was excellent.

Another enjoyable aspect was spotting so many familiar faces. I caught a very brief glimpse of Kenneth Tobey and half a dozen other performers whose faces, if not their names, were very familiar . . . like the nutty lady talking to "milkman" Scott Brady.