The Street with No Name

Fresh from giggling his sadistic way through Kiss of Death, Widmark steals a march on this follow-up to the documentary approach of House on 92nd Street with his brilliantly quirky characterisation of a gangster in the throes of hypochondria (terrified of germs and draughts, he draws his nasal inhaler more often than his gun) and misogyny (in between bouts of wife-beating, he flirts coyly with Stevens, the young FBI agent who has infiltrated his gang). Inspired by the FBI's concern over the re-emergence of organised crime, and saddled with a narrator boasting what a great job the Bureau is doing, the film slips quietly into the noir genre with its shadowy camerawork, its ambiguous relationships, and its subversive delight in the personable Widmark's city of corruption. It was later reworked by Fuller as House of Bamboo.