The Lineup
Theatrical poster
Directed byDon Siegel
Screenplay byStirling Silliphant
Produced byJaime Del Valle
StarringEli Wallach
Robert Keith
Warner Anderson
CinematographyHal Mohr
Edited byAl Clark
Color processBlack and white
Production
company
Pajemer Productions
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • June 1, 1958 (1958-06-01) (United States)
Running time
87 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Lineup is a 1958 American film noir version of the police procedural television series of the same title that ran on CBS radio from 1950 until 1953, and on CBS television from 1954 until 1960. The film was directed by Don Siegel. It features a number of scenes shot on location in San Francisco during the late 1950s, including shots of the Embarcadero Freeway (then still under construction), the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, the War Memorial Opera House, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and Sutro Baths.

Plot

An international drug-smuggling racket plants heroin on unsuspecting American tourists traveling from Asia, so that the dope can pass through customs undetected. Two psychopathic killers, Dancer and Julian, and their driver McLain then collect the contraband, and they murder several people along the way. Lt. Ben Guthrie leads the police hunt for the criminals. The head of the heroin ring is a person known only as "The Man".

The story begins when an American tourist disembarking in San Francisco from a cruise ship returning from Hong Kong has his bag stolen by a cabbie. As the cabbie takes off at high speed, he strikes and kills a police officer. The cab later crashes and the cabbie is killed. A police investigation discloses that the cab driver is a heroin addict, and attention is drawn to a heroin smuggling ring.

Dancer and Julian have instructions to retrieve the heroin from the unsuspecting tourists and deliver it to a drop point at Sutro's Museum (a real San Francisco location until it burned down in 1966) where the bag containing the heroin is to be left inside an antique ship's binnacle. Dancer and Julian are instructed by their contact, Staples, that they must make the drop and be gone before 4:05 pm. But when it turns out that two of the tourists—Dorothy Bradshaw and her young daughter, Cynthia—had unknowingly disposed of the heroin, Dancer and Julian are in a bind; if they drop off the bag with a large portion of the heroin missing, their lives may be in danger. Dancer and Julian decide that instead of leaving the bag and departing the premises by 4:05, Dancer will stay, meet The Man and explain why the shipment is short. Dancer and Julian also kidnap Dorothy and Cynthia and bring them to Sutro's so they can back up the story. They surprise The Man, who turns out to be disabled and in a wheelchair.

But when Dancer meets The Man and explains himself, The Man has an unexpected reaction; he tells Dancer that "nobody ever sees me," and that because Dancer has seen him, "you're dead". The Man slaps Dancer across the face with the bag of heroin and Dancer, enraged, pushes The Man off a balcony, killing him.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco police have spotted the getaway car with Julian, McLain, and the kidnapped Dorothy and Cynthia. When Dancer exits Sutro's, a high speed car chase ensues, filmed in the area of The Embarcadero. When the car becomes trapped at a barrier on the Embarcadero Freeway, there is a shootout between Dancer and the police.[1]

Cast

In the film, Warner Anderson and Marshall Reed reprise their roles as Lieutenant Ben Guthrie and Inspector Fred Asher from the TV series. However, Tom Tully's character, Inspector Matt Grebb, is replaced by Inspector Al Quine, played by Emile Meyer. Tully, the series co-star, was not in the film. Anderson, the series star, was given co-star billing instead of star billing; star billing was given to Wallach, who played the movie's main villain.

Reception

Variety's review called it a "moderately exciting melodrama" that spends too much time on the police procedural aspects.[2] Time Out described it as "more brutal, sadistic and threatening" than The Killers.[3] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader called it "a major B movie by one of Hollywood's most accomplished craftsmen".[4]

The Lineup was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in conjunction with Sony Pictures, in 1997.[5]

Style and Theme

“Siegel gets at least one scene, in The Lineup, as sensitive as Robert Frank’s still shots. What is so lyrical about the ending, in San Francisco’s Sutro Museum, is the Japanese-print compositions, the late afternoon lighting, the advantage taken of the long hallways, multi-level stairways in a baroque, elegant, glass-palace building...It’s a minor masterpiece of preplanning and an extensively structured pictorial tour by Seigel...”—Film critic Manny Farber in Farber on Film (2009)[6]

Film critic Manny Farber comments on Seigel’s cinematic approach to The Lineup:

The Seigel touch is always apparent in the excessive number of viewpoint shots, the nice feeling for an eroded structure with awkward angles, and especially with the fascination with a somewhat mannered athleticism seen from above, in which a body is poised or moving against background action that is a violent contrast in space, tone and movement.[7]

Faber notes Seigel’s “sad reliance on edgy Broadway acting” in particular “Eli Wallach overworking his nervous leering eyes.”[8] Biographer Judith M. Kass observes that The Line-up “embodies all the characteristics” informing Seigel’s assessment of the “normal” world.[9] Kass writes:

“The ‘normal’ world—the terrain Seigel usually works in—is depicted as not at all normal...the characters are counterpoised against an environment which is as deranged as they are. The straight world is as phony, dishonest and evil as the criminal’s, without the one qualification which may be an improvement on the normal: they [the criminals] are honest about their lawlessness...”[10]

The film contains the line, "When you live outside the law, you have to eliminate dishonesty," of which Jonathan Lethem writes that "Bob Dylan heard it…, cleaned it up a little, and inserted it into 'Absolutely Sweet Marie'" (as "To live outside the law you must be honest.").[11]

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Kass, 1975 p. 127-128: Plot summary
  2. ↑ "The Lineup". Variety. 1958. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  3. ↑ "The Lineup". Time Out. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  4. ↑ Kehr, Dave (17 March 2006). "The Lineup". Chicago Reader. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  6. ↑ Farber, 2009 p. 676
  7. ↑ Faber, 2009 p. 676
  8. ↑ Faber, 2009 p. 676
  9. ↑ Kass, 1975 p. 127
  10. ↑ Kass, 1975 p. 127
  11. ↑ Jonathan Lethem, "The Ecstasy of Influence", Harper's, February 2007, 59–71. p. 59.

Sources

  • Kass, Judith M. (1975). Don Seigel: The Hollywood Professionals, Volume 4 (1975 ed.). New York: Tanvity Press. p. 207. ISBN 0-498-01665-X.
  • Farber, Manny. 2009. Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber. Edited by Robert Polito. Library of America. ISBN 978-1-59853-050-6
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