This is, I think, what they called a "high concept" film. Let's have a young man climb out on the ledge of a New York hotel and build up a back story about his tsuris and at the same time tell small tales of the diverse witnesses to the guy's dilemma.
That precisely how the movie moves along from point to point, a little mechanically, but suspenseful and engaging. It's professionally handled by Henry Hathaway, a director who probably had little sympathy for a temperamentally unstable fellow who couldn't handle his hysterical and self-indulgent Mamma, Agnes Moorehead.
The goods are delivered. Most of the work is done by Richard Basehart as the would-be suicide and Paul Douglas as the traffic cop who befriends him and alternately wheedles and lambastes him.
Movies mavens will be left agog after they see the list of supporting and bit players, many uncredited, who were to go on to climb to dazzling heights in Hollywood, either as stars or as indispensable supports -- Grace Kelly, Jeffrey Hunter, Jeff Corey, Brian Keith, Richard Beymer, and John Cassavetes among them.
The movie doesn't wallow in easy sentiment. It's pretty tough-minded. But a modern treatment, if it had any pretense to realism, would be far more cynical. The only characters here who exploit Basehart's impending self destruction are a nutty preacher who naturally belongs to no recognized church, a cabbie who organizes a pool to bet on when Basehart jumps, and of course the press. But nobody in the streets complains that a weakling like Basehart, who is probably a sissy just out for attention, deserves to die. And if any of the bystanders jumps up and down yelling, "Jump! Jump!", it must have been while I was in a period of microsleep. In 1951, it's my impression, Americans in general weren't so anxious to see a sensational splash on Broadway, not even New Yorkers.
Worth catching.
That precisely how the movie moves along from point to point, a little mechanically, but suspenseful and engaging. It's professionally handled by Henry Hathaway, a director who probably had little sympathy for a temperamentally unstable fellow who couldn't handle his hysterical and self-indulgent Mamma, Agnes Moorehead.
The goods are delivered. Most of the work is done by Richard Basehart as the would-be suicide and Paul Douglas as the traffic cop who befriends him and alternately wheedles and lambastes him.
Movies mavens will be left agog after they see the list of supporting and bit players, many uncredited, who were to go on to climb to dazzling heights in Hollywood, either as stars or as indispensable supports -- Grace Kelly, Jeffrey Hunter, Jeff Corey, Brian Keith, Richard Beymer, and John Cassavetes among them.
The movie doesn't wallow in easy sentiment. It's pretty tough-minded. But a modern treatment, if it had any pretense to realism, would be far more cynical. The only characters here who exploit Basehart's impending self destruction are a nutty preacher who naturally belongs to no recognized church, a cabbie who organizes a pool to bet on when Basehart jumps, and of course the press. But nobody in the streets complains that a weakling like Basehart, who is probably a sissy just out for attention, deserves to die. And if any of the bystanders jumps up and down yelling, "Jump! Jump!", it must have been while I was in a period of microsleep. In 1951, it's my impression, Americans in general weren't so anxious to see a sensational splash on Broadway, not even New Yorkers.
Worth catching.