The Falcon in San Francisco is not a bad little B-movie: it runs just over an hour, ha a romance, a cute moppet, comic relief, a femme fatale and even some location shooting. Director Joseph H. Lewis would go on to direct the less formulaic My Name is Julia Ross the same year and then the superb Gun Crazy in 1950. How good one could make a series B-movie was part of the challenge for directors who aspired to better things and Lewis was able to include comedy (Ed Brophy), adventure and romance -- with both a sexy bad girl (Fay Helm) and a wholesome good girl (Joan Marshall). The Falcon (no reason is given for the name) is played by Tom Conway, brother of George Sanders, who starred as the character in the first three films of the series, based on a story by Michael Arlen.
To a certain extend I enjoy B-movies from this period. The Falcon in San Francisco starts out with a murder on a train, moves to a swanky nightclub and ends up with a ship exploding in the harbor. The crisp black-and-white cinematography is by Virgil Miller, and the film is full of skilled character actors, including Robert Armstrong and Carl Kent as well as an unbilled Dorothy Adams as a hotel maid.
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