Where the Sidewalk Ends

1950
Approved
1h 35m

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

10K

YOUR RATING

Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews in Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

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Cop Drama Film Noir Police Procedural Crime Drama

Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon wants to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. Will Dixon's vicious nature get the better of him?Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon wants to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. Will Dixon's vicious nature get the better of him?Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon wants to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. Will Dixon's vicious nature get the better of him?

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

10K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Hoodlum
(uncredited)

David Bauer

Sid Kramer
(uncredited)

Eddie Borden

Pool Hall Patron
(uncredited)

Neville Brand

Steve
(uncredited)

Barry Brooks

Thug
(uncredited)

Ralph Brooks

Railroad Baggage Clerk
(uncredited)

Oleg Cassini

Oleg
(uncredited)

John Close

Hanson
(uncredited)

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
This is the last in a series of films that Otto Preminger made as a director-for-hire for Twentieth Century Fox in the 1940s. The series includes Laura (1944), which also stars Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, Fallen Angel (1945) and Whirlpool (1950).

Goofs
In the opening sequence, the police dispatcher is heard on the car radio. The words spoken by the dispatcher, announcing two incidents, are lifted directly from the 1949 Procedures Manual of the New York City Police Department, where they are given as examples of the correct radio method. Only the time of day was changed to agree with the scene, but the addresses, incidents, car numbers, and dispatcher number are verbatim from the manual.

Quotes
[to Detective Dixon]
Insp. Nicholas Foley: Your job is to detect criminals, not to punish them.

Crazy credits
The opening credits start as chalk writing on a sidewalk with someone walking over them and whistling.

Connections
Featured in Gene Tierney: Final Curtain for a Noir Icon (2008)

Soundtracks
Street Scene
(uncredited)
Music by Alfred Newman
Whistled during opening credits

User reviews143

Review

Featured review

8/10

His brutal ways

Where The Sidewalk Ends stars Dana Andrews as a hardboiled Inspector Javert like detective whom I suspect would have been just as brutal with suspects after Miranda as before. Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry has nothing on Andrews. He's warned by his superiors that they'll not tolerate his brutal ways.

Craig Stevens and his wife Gene Tierney have been acting as come-ons for suckers that they get to hoodlum Gary Merrill's dice game. When the latest sucker Harry Von Zell is killed by Stevens, Andrews goes after him. But a drunken Stevens punches out Andrews and Dana gets rough. What he doesn't know is that Stevens has a plate in his head courtesy of the late war and the blow that Andrews strikes Stevens with kills him.

Had he not had this reputation for brutality Andrews probably would have weathered this storm. But he does have the reputation for brutality and therefore Dana knows this could be it. Stupidly he tries to cover it up until Tierney's father Tom Tully is arrested for the murder. After that it's a matter of conscience. And it was conscience that inevitably got Javert in Les Miserables. And like Javert, Andrews has a hoodlum father whose life he's trying to live down.

Otto Preminger who directed Andrews in so many good features for 20th Century Fox like Laura, Daisy Kenyon, and Fallen Angel gets one more good performance from him as the lead. Serendipitously he's teamed with Gene Tierney his Laura leading lady who is as beautiful and as enchanting as she was in Laura albeit a little more down to earth. Gary Merrill as the crap game organizer is a real bucket of slime who also was a protégé of Dana's father. It's that surrogate son relationship that Andrews truly despises about Merrill.

Karl Malden who gives us an indication of what he would be like in Streets Of San Francisco plays Malden's lieutenant who got the promotion because Andrews was passed over. A lot of tension in that relationship.

Where The Sidewalk Ends ranks in the top 10 of Dana Andrews films and must for his fans.