Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)

Not to be confused with the Shell Silverstein book of the same name 'Where the Sidewalk Ends' is a film noir reteaming 'Laura' stars Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, as well as the final movie director Otto Preminger made under contract with 20th Century Fox. 'Laura' is such as great movie I didn't expect much here, fearing it would just be a cynical attempt to exploit the legacy of the earlier film, previous Preminger attempts to do so with Andrews and Tierney separately (such as 'Daisy Kenyon' and 'Whirlpool' respectively) were not great, and while 'Sidewalk' is no 'Laura' it is in fact quite good. I'd go so far as to say its the greatest performance I've ever seen Dana Andrews give, and I like the guy he's just not a particularly deep actor. Andrews plays a hard edged New York City detective who accidently kills a suspect in another accidental death, he panics and tries to cover up his involvement and inadvertently ends up falling for the mans widow. Everything here is set up much better then it sounds in my brief description, a nice, compact, artfully drawn film noir/character study, with nice supporting parts for Gary Merrill,  Karl Malden and others. Not much is demanded from Tierney here but she gives a fine performance and is beautiful as always. The legendary Ben Hecht adapted the film from the William L. Stuart novel 'Night Cry'. ***