I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about 2010’s The Town while watching 1955 noir Six Bridges to Cross. I think it is largely because both are crime pictures set in Boston and both use as a plot point the sudden closure of the city’s many bridges immediately after a heist.
Aside from that development, the 1955 movie has little that suggests it is set in that city. I was surprised (pleased, actually) nobody attempted the accent that area is known for, let alone the particularly exaggerated one most actors employ.
Tony Curtis stars as an affable criminal who is a stool pigeon for, and sometimes friend of, a police detective played by George Nader. When Curtis was a young teen (as played by Sal Mineo in the same year he appeared in Rebel Without a Cause), he was shot by rookie beat cop Nader while attempting to flee a breaking and entering of a store. Somebody says, as a result of his injuries, Mineo/Curtis (Mentis? Curneo?) will never have children. Where the hell did he get shot, anyway?!
It seems both of them feel some guilt about the incident, so Nader repeatedly visits Mineo in the hospital, and the two develop a rapport. After a crossfade that turns Mineo into Curtis (Minto?), he continues a life of crime, but offsets this by supplying inside info to Nader about a planned warehouse heist.
Curtis is then falsely accused of rape but does the time anyway, swearing he’ll get revenge on the real perpetrator when he’s released from the house of detention upon turning 21. Since he already appears to be at least 25, I was wondering how this would work. Would they make him walk backwards for at least four years, like how some bozos think driving a car in reverse will roll back the odometer? Also, I was very confused by why anybody who was sexually assaulted would accuse the wrong person of the crime, and then why the falsely accused would serve the sentence. Lastly, I wondered if, while in the house of detention, did he happen to run into Julio and his friend and, if so, did he ask exactly what they did down in the schoolyard?
Upon his releases, Nader arranges a job for Curtis as an elevator operator in a hotel. Curtis makes extra money on the side by running bets from hotel guests to bookies. Then he gets the idea to have the members of his gang place bets on a longshot while, at the racetrack, he pulls a gun on the man who relays race results to the bookies by phone. By having that announcer read faked race results declaring the longshot to be the winner, the gang comes into a large amount of false winnings when it is announced the wrong horse wins.
That doesn’t seem like a great plan to me, stealing money from people who I suspect would be likely to go outside the law to seek justice. But that isn’t the direction the movie goes in. For one thing, Curtis doesn’t get away with it. He’s apprehended by the police after he crashes his car during the getaway. Still, I was shocked he wasn’t whacked in prison.
The racetrack incident is too much for Nader, who decides they can no longer be friends. Time passes while Curtis is in prison. 1941 rolls around and the invasion of Pearl Harbor encourages many prisoners to apply for enlistment. Curtis tries, but is rejected because he isn’t a citizen. He wasn’t born in the US and his father never completed the process for citizenship.
So he isn’t able to serve his country but he does obtain citizenship afterwards by getting married. The widow he marries even has three kids already so, despite not being able to have biological children of his own, he now has an instant family. The friendship between Nader and Curtis is restored to the extent where the detective is even the best man at the wedding.
Curtis appears to now be living life walking the straight and narrow. He buys a couple of gas stations and soon has a small chain of them. One of these just happens to be across from an armored car operation. I don’t believe the name of the company is mentioned, but it assumed to be Brink’s. After millions are stolen from there, Nader firmly believes Curtis is behind it, despite his pleas of innocence.
And here’s where I started having a problem with this film. Admittedly, the prior behavior of Curtis does automatically make him a suspect. But Nader resorts to some rather un-heroic subterfuge by trying to get Curtis deported. I’m surprised a movie from that era would have its alleged hero fight dirty like that. Then again, he also shot Curtis in a delicate area when he was a kid.
Ironically, Nader is also under suspicion, as the district attorney wonders why he has been pally for so many years with a repeat offender. I didn’t feel this avenue was explored to its full potential. All the detective does is explain to a grand jury the necessity of stool pigeons and their use in police investigations, and they let him go.
Of the three pictures in volume four of Kino’s ongoing noir box set series, Six Bridges to Cross is the one that best fits the genre. Although it is middle-tier noir, it still pushed many of the right buttons for me. It was interesting to see a feature where a cop and a criminal have such a fractured relationship over such a long period of time.
Dir: Joseph Pevney
Starring Tony Curtis, George Nader, Julie Adams
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IV