Although introduced by Eddie Muller on Turner Classic Movies as a film noir Five Steps to Danger only marginally fits in that genre. It does have a sense of fatality, as Ann Nicholson (Ruth Roman) and John Emmet (Sterling Hayden) meet at a car repair shop; Emmet's car is sold and he gets a ride with Nicholson, about whom he knows nothing, but she's headed to Santa Fe and he is on his way to Texas. Five Steps to Danger seems more like "Cold War noir," as director Kesler made few movies but did direct twenty-six episodes of "I Led Three Lives," a TV communist spy drama that probably helped him to get financing for the low-budget (except for the two stars) Five Steps to Danger, which was beautifully framed and filmed in black-and-white by cinematographer Kenneth Peach, a veteran of B movies and televison.
Ann and John are followed by the cops, who try to arrest Ann for a murder. Ann and John fight them off and escaped handcuffed together like Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll in Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935), as Ann tells her story about escaping from Germany with some secret information about nuclear bombs (the "Macguffin," i.e., the device that motivates the plot). It becomes hard to tell the bad guys from the good guys but Ann and John finally figure out who are the commie spies and who are government agents when the scientist to whom Ann is delivering the information turns out to be an imposter; a college dean and Ann's doctor are also working for the commies. Although this film is very much of its time it also transcends it, as strangers Ann and John gradually learn to trust, understand and help each other, though the "happy" ending is somewhat inconsistent with the film noir motifs that precede it.
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