Borderline (1950/Roan Group)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: C-     Film: C+

 

 

Many people are surprised that Fred MacMurray had a darker career before the likes of The Nutty Professor and My Three Sons, so how does the serious actor of Billy Wilder’s Film Noir classic Double Indemnity become a happy father figure?  Well, besides the eventual end of Noir, MacMurray could have continued on a serious route.  However, his work as a serious actor started to become a sort of spoof of itself and that persona started to crack on Borderline, a 1950 Universal Noir that becomes somewhat comically deconstructive as it goes along.

 

Sometimes, the moments are forerunners of the likes of Airplane! and The Naked Gun franchise, but it is not as knowing in doing this all the time and not as explicitly trying to be funny.  However, this was the midpoint of Noir (running 1941 – 1958) and though WWII was over, the country was getting deeper into a Cold War and the conservatism of the time was becoming a new domestic menace.  This film can be seen as a reflection of that.

 

MacMurray plays a pre-DEA agent opposite Claire Trevor, who also turns out to be working for the same outfit, but neither of them knows it.  Raymond Burr, who would later play lawyer hero Perry Mason and police hero Ironside, was in the middle of his “bad guy” cycle.  Four years before Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, Burr was on a roll in such roles and is another actor who switched personas as the TV era arrived, if not as dramatic as MacMurray.  The film is somewhat uneven, but always interesting to watch, even when it does not work.  It is a fun older film that tried something different.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is claimed to be from the original camera negative and the print source looks good, but this is a transfer restoration from 2000 and could use some upgrading later.  As it stands, it is average, with some lack of detail (not severe) and slight digital hazing here and there.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is smaller than expected, but may have been intended for Roan’s old 1.0 Dolby-only option that was not as good.  This will do until an HD version in a few years and there is brief text on the film as the disc’s only extra.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo