Edwin L. Marin's Race Street (1948)

Edwin L Marin's Race Street speaks to the strength of the film noir genre in the way that his Raton Pass (which I wrote about in January) speaks to the strength of the Western drama.  Race Street has all the trappings of the film noir -- a nightclub singer singing torch songs, post-WWII disillusionment, a femme fatale, etc. --without an important element, i.e., a vulnerable hero.  William Bendix as a cop, Marilyn Maxwell as the two-timing femme fatale, Harry Morgan as the struggling bookie, Gale Robbins as the nightclub chanteuse, Frank Faylen as the gang leader muscling in with the protection racket, even Charles Lane as the paid-off hotel manager, are all terrific.  Only lead actor George Raft fails to project the necessary vulnerability and fatality to make this a successful film noir.

Still, there are wonderful things in this movie.  The superb use of San Francisco locations (cinematography by J. Roy Hunt) and its hilly streets give one a sense of the roller coaster that life can be, just as Hitchcock did in Vertigo (1958).  Also, when Gale Robbins sings "I'm in a Jam with Baby" (music by Ray Heindorf and M.K.  Jerome, lyrics by Ted Koehler) as she magically floats above the nightclub crowd and, especially, the complex relationships of Raft with cop William Bendix and struggling bookie Harry Morgan that have evolved over a lifetime.