WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS ***

There is a nice stench of something resembling corruption at the heart of this Otto Preminger directed noir which followed on from "Laura" and "Fallen Angel" and which continued his collaboration with the actor Dana Andrews. In this one Andrews plays a cop who wants to do good but whose temper gets the better of him. When he kills a suspect things go from bad to worse for him, particularly when he falls in love with the man's widow, (Gene Tierney, who else).

"Where the Sidewalk Ends" may not be the classic that "Laura" was, or indeed "Fallen Angel", but once again Andrews is superb, (he was certainly one of the most underrated of great actors, brilliant at playing heroes with demons to cope with, literally in the case of "Night of the Demon"). There's good work, too, from Karl Malden, Gary Merrill, Tom Tully, Ruth Donnelly and an excellent Bert Freed as Andrews' partner and Ben Hecht did the fine screenplay from a novel by William L Stuart. Unfortunately the film has largely been forgotten and Preminger's star is no longer in the ascendant but this is still well worth seeing.