THE FALCON IN SAN FRANCISCO
US, 1945, 66 minutes, Black-and-white.
Tom Conway, Rita Corday, Edward Brophy, Sharryn Moffat, Robert Armstrong.
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis.
The Falcon in San Francisco continues Tom Conway’s series of films as the Falcon. Beginning in 1943, he made a significant number of films, playing The Falcon in the same suave way in all of them.
This film, as with several others, has The Falcon starting out on a holiday but soon involved in a mysterious case. This time he is in company with his assistant, Goldie Locke, played by Edward Brophy. It is a characteristic of Falcon and Saint films to have the hero with this kind of sidekick, offering some humour and slapstick.
The Falcon finds himself on a train going for a holiday to San Francisco and encounters a stray dog and the little girl who owns him. She spins tall tales and speaks of a severe nurse - who is then murdered. The Falcon offers to take the little girl home and she gives him a false address. A witness on the train phones the police and The Falcon is arrested for an abduction. This is the beginning of a rather complicated case, involving Rita Corday (who appeared in the number of Falcon films) as the little girl’s older sister. The butler of the house is murdered and the older daughter goes mysteriously to meet the manager of the shipping line – and it is revealed that she is the owner.
The Falcon is also abducted by a mysterious femme fatale who has some henchmen with guns, as well as a rivalry with a fellow criminal.
The film has some interesting twists, especially with the older sister allegedly having a rendezvous with a lover but, in fact, with her father who is the manager of the company. The Falcon is suspicious of smuggling from South America on the ships and information about the husband of the dead nurse. He pretends to be working on the wharf, discovers silk being smuggled, goes to the manager who offers his support. But the satisfying final twist is that the manager/father is actually a criminal from the bootlegging days of prohibition. There is a shootout with various criminals ending up dead.
The film is more carefully made than many of its predecessors, with some San Francisco locations, and with some interesting direction (many of the shots films through rungs of chairs, bars, grilles, suggesting some kind of imprisonment). Movie buffs will want to see the film because it is directed by Joseph H. Lewis, director of many small-budget films up till this but about to make his classic My Name is Julia Ross and a succession of small films including another classic, Gun Crazy.
