Monday at the Movies - March 26, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today we look at a forgotten entry in the history of comics at the movies.

Dick Tracy (1945) – There’s a video of me from an age younger than five, reading (or reciting) the names of characters from Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy adaptation. Imagine my surprise to learn that there were not one, but four, preceding adaptations of the iconic Chester Gould comic strip from the RKO studio. It seems that these films have been largely forgotten because of their B-picture quality, filmed quite transparently on a tight budget with a dearth of recognizable players (though Boris Karloff would ultimately appear in Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome [1947]). Morgan Conway stars as Dick Tracy; though he lacks the chiseled profile and yellow coat that Beatty brought to the role, he plays the detective like a lean noir Fred MacMurray, avuncular but never resting in his pursuit of justice. In fact, I was surprised at how lean and noir the whole film is – at a tight 61 minutes, the film does all the beats of a police procedural, and it does so with an atmosphere of surprisingly effective dread and a soundtrack that recalls The Maltese Falcon on more than one occasion. I was also struck by how effectively the film apes the Gould comic, with narrative pauses to explain forensic clues (like footprints from a puddle of oil or tire tracks leading off into a garage); moreover, the moments when Tracy interrogates a suspect are framed like comic strip panels, over which one can almost imagine a nervous speech bubble or Gould’s caricatured linework. The film is not ultimately a slamdunk, though it is about the best B-movie treatment of Dick Tracy one could imagine; its villain, Splitface, is rather underwhelming, especially given the more famous foes who appear penciled over the opening credits, and Conway feels somewhat undercooked as Tracy. But what is surprising is how quickly and how effectively the film captures the ethos of the Gould comic strip, a noteworthy if forgotten installment in the exciting history of comics on film.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!