A police officer's shooting during an auto theft brings the force to full alert. The lone witness refuses to talk without a lawyer present, while the killers plan their biggest heist yet. Over 24 hours, the police use every trick in the book – both official and unofficial – to bring the killers to justice.
On paper, 1953’s “Vice Squad” reads like any number of crime pictures from the golden age of Hollywood. On screen, however, it feels quietly revolutionary. Screening at Woodmere at 7 p.m. February 18, this film is the missing link between classic crime films and the modern police procedural.
Adapted from the novel “Harness Bull” by author Leslie T. White, “Vice Squad” has all the markings of hard-boiled crime cinema of the era: The bars of prison cells throw expressionistic shadows onto the wall; hoods in flashy suits talk tough in a seedy warehouse hideaway and Edward G. Robinson, an icon of Warner Bros. gangster pictures, takes the lead as Capt. “Barney” Barnaby. Yet, aside from a tense and memorable scene at the film's finale, "Vice Squad" seems less interested in the noir trappings of the previous decade than in the mechanics of real police work. Rather than the inky isolating underworlds of classic noir, the bulk of "Vice Squad's" action takes place in the bustling halls of a police precinct.
The camera tracks Robinson across rooms teeming with detectives conducting police lineups and through congested hallways. The "walk and talk" – a technique that has characters walk while conversing to add energy to dialogue scenes, which would later become famous in countless police dramas – finds its earliest form in "Vice Squad."
That "Vice Squad" feels like the blueprint for the police procedural is not surprising. Director Arnold Laven would find his footing in television as a director and producer, bringing the film’s penchant for grounded police work to the small screen in early TV hits like "The Detectives."
If "Vice Squad" is notable for its attention to the legwork involved in solving a crime, it's perhaps most interesting how underhanded some of those tactics are. Captain Barnaby and his department are not above fighting dirty if it helps them crack the case. Jack Hartrampf (Porter Hall), the hapless witness to the cop slaying, is kept in custody on a series of increasingly ludicrous charges. A stool pigeon (Jay Adler) is persuaded to give information with the promise that his own petty crimes will be overlooked, a promise that looks less likely to be honored as the film progresses. And Captain Barnaby is not above exploiting his friendship with Mona, the owner of an escort service (a scene-stealing Paulette Goddard), in exchange for information, even if it means holding her employees in lockup. "Vice Squad" offers these tactics to the viewer without commentary, depicting them as just another tool in Barnaby's arsenal, leaving the viewer to puzzle out their ethics.
At the time of “Vice Squad’s” release, the Hays Code was still in effect and the depiction of cops in film was resolutely black and white; either cops were honest and heroes or corrupt and would get their comeuppance in the end. “Vice Squad” stands out from the crowd by leaving their officers in a tantalizing moral gray area.
When it was released into theaters in 1953, few could have seen "Vice Squad" for the innovator that it was. Television was still a new guest in living rooms across America, and the rules for what programming would look like were still largely unwritten. To watch "Vice Squad" today is to glimpse the television procedural nearly fully formed on the silver screen a few years early to the party. Its earnest depiction of police work and its refusal to take an easy, clean moral stance on the methods used to catch criminals speak to our present moment and the way we view police, both on and off the screen.
"Vice Squad" screens at Woodmere on Tuesday, February 18th at 7 p.m. as part of the Tuesday Night at the Movies film series. Light refreshments will be served before the screening. While admission is free, donations are welcome. Contact woodmereartmuseum.org for weather-related updates or changes.
