Port of New York

Eagle-Lion’s answer to the semi-documentaries Fox was cutting from real case files: a narrator with a government voice, location work on the Manhattan waterfront, and Scott Brady as a Customs agent working a narcotics case off the piers. László Benedek, four years before The Wild One, shoots the city as evidence: freight sheds, gangways, rooming houses. Yul Brynner, in his first picture, runs the ring without ever raising his voice. The story is routine; the procedure is the point. Watch for the closing file photograph, which shows you the villain as a case closed.