After a fellow cop’s suspicious suicide, homicide detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) starts asking questions in a city where the police, the politicians and the mob all seem to be in business together. When his investigation puts his family in danger, he stops following the rules and sets out to bring the syndicate down, whatever it costs him. Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin co-star as members of the gangster’s circle, in a film that is as violent as anything Hollywood was making in 1953. Fritz Lang directs at the height of his Hollywood career: lean, angry and fatalistic, and one of the hardest-boiled noirs ever made.

Screening presented on 35mm film.