There has been plenty of ink spilled over He Walked by Night, so what does a few more words matter?
Nearly every book about so-called film noir has used the movie as a case study. It’s had multiple releases on disc—DVD and Blu-ray—and if one has enough gumption to type “he walked by ni—” into the search bar of YouTube, the title will auto-complete, and you can mash your fat fingers on the play button. Suffice it to say, as far as movies of this vintage go, it’s fairly well-known, and therefore not something I would tend to write about here. While my taste in movies runs far and wide, my heart lies with cinema arcana, the mangy and misunderstood, the avant-garde and the retrograde.
The desire to make new discoveries usually wins over rewatching one of the greats. Yet, the other night I revisited He Walked by Night and it made me think that maybe I should be watching the enduring classics more often.
I suppose there’s no need for justification, I just adore He Walked by Night and here’s some quick and only slightly connected notes to explain why.
The Introduction
Over a map of metropolitan Los Angeles, we begin our story with a block of text—the virtuous strains of music underscore the importance of these words. We are told in no uncertain terms, “THIS IS A TRUE STORY” about a “diabolical” and “cunning” killer.
The credits dissolve to God’s eye-view of the sprawling nightmare that is Los Angeles. “This is Los Angeles […] the fastest growing city in the nation.” We are shown some glimpses of postcard-perfect beauty, almost as if mandated by the tourism bureau.
With those obligations out of the way, our tour takes us to police headquarters—specifically into the Communications Division. “Spend an hour or two here and you will think the whole city has gone berserk,” informs our narrator. From that point on in the movie, we are immersed in strange, cavernous buildings and underlit city streets populated with stone-faced strangers.
Dragnet may have coopted this style of opening into a charming cliché, but here it serves its purpose as the thunder before the storm.
The Strange Objects
The frosted glass door of the aforementioned Communications Division looks like a star cluster, and fittingly behind the door lies another world.
The Communications Division is tangled with intricate equipment that sorts and distributes data, dwarfing the human occupants. It’s like people are inside a giant proto computer.
The theme of strange technology runs through the scene where Richard Basehart strokes his oscilloscope like a nervous pet.
There’s the sight of a bizarre television set composed of two trapezoids sitting in a display window.
The world of He Walked by Night is dominated by technology; the film verges of science-fiction.
The Blank Faces
A major component of the story revolves around reconstructing the face of the killer from eyewitness testimony. The police project a stack of carefully chosen slides to form a composite visage, and the slightly twisted stare of Basehart looms over the audience—both in the police room and, by extension, those in the movie theater watching the film.
Outside of that scene, there is a conscious stylistic decision to obscure identities through shadows and masks.
The killer lives in the darkest apartment in the sunniest city. The police are photographed like faceless figures. The movie culminates with law enforcement in utterly nightmarish gas masks.
He Walked by Night is about identifying and exterminating a human—and visually it appears that humanness, i.e. faces, are being snuffed out.
If Richard Baseheart had been made up with pointy incisors, the film would be categorized as horror.
Dorothy Adams
As if to remind us of the narrator’s comment, “you will think the whole city has gone berserk,” two thirds into the movie character actress Dorothy Adams jumps into the story to accost Scott Brady undercover as a milkman. She claims that the manager of the housing complex—a genuine witch—is poisoning her milk.
Oddly, this little exchange manages to provoke more unease than the entire business about a hunt for a psychopathic killer.
It’s worth noting that Dorothy Adams’ husband, Byron Foulger, also appears in the film—one of several features they both graced with their presence.
The Unearthly Spaces
Of course, cinematographer John Alton is the real star of the movie. The cinematic world he creates here is a spiraling nightmare quite literally going down the drain—the film’s climax takes place in the storm drains of L.A.
He Walked by Night is incredibly effective, but it’s nice to get a breath of fresh air 79 minutes later.
