Meanwhile, Apple's mother interrupts him as he is packing to tell him that Muggles, Ruby and another gang member, "Magician," have come for him. Torno catches him on foot and subdues him. After eluding them by turning the wrong way up an exit ramp, Cowboy drives over an embankment. Torno and the police, who have followed Apple, surprise the gang, but Cowboy escapes in a stolen Jaguar and leads the police on a chase through Los Angeles streets and freeways. As Cowboy and the gang prepare to torch the Morrows' house with kerosene, Apple comes to the garage asking for money so that he can leave town. Ann becomes hysterical, yelling that the gang will slit their throats. At ten minutes to twelve, Cowboy phones Fred, who tells him to go to hell. Meanwhile, Torno goes to see Apple, whom he once arrested with Cowboy, but Apple denies being with Cowboy that day. When the police arrive, Fred expresses his anger. When a note tied to a rock is thrown through their living room window, Fred prepares to take his crying children and Ann to a motel, but they find that their car has been vandalized and the tires slashed. That evening, Cowboy phones and gives Fred until midnight to rip up the affidavit, or else, he says, his wife and children will die. Fred reports the incident to Torno, who arranges police protection for the Morrows. Muggles then pulls a gun on Ann, while Cowboy warns Fred to tear up the affidavit. The gang ram Fred and Ann in their car after they leave the supermarket and push them through an intersection, nearly causing an accident. Apple tries to talk Cowboy out of killing Fred, but Cowboy orders him to go away and keep his mouth shut. Cowboy calls Fred's home and learns from his young daughter that he and his wife Ann have gone to the supermarket. When Hurley follows, Cowboy knocks him over the head with a pipe, and they take Hurley's notebook and gun. While Hurley is making his neighborhood rounds, "Apple," an African-American member of the gang, and the only one who was visibly pained when Emelio was stabbed, attacks Ruby and takes her purse, then runs into an alley and hides. After Ruby relates that she saw police officer Hurley write down Fred's name and address, "Muggles," a beat-talking drug addict, comes up with a plan to get Hurley's notebook. At the gang's hangout in a garage, Cowboy becomes frantic when he learns from a newspaper article that Emelio has died and that the district attorney has a mystery witness. When none of the many neighborhood witnesses come forward to testify to the police, Fred steps forward and relates Emelio's dying words, "Cowboy did it." At police headquarters, Fred identifies Cowboy's mug shot to Detective Rafael Torno, who is fearful he will lose Fred's cooperation once he discovers the possible consequences of being the only witness to the murder. Tompkins, known as "Cowboy," who found Emelio dancing with his flirtatious girl friend, Ruby. While on the phone, he witnesses the fatal stabbing of Emelio Sanchez by gang leader William L. neighborhood and makes a phone call at a café frequented by teenagers. We have the iconography of the nighttime aerial shot and the inky-black chiaroscuro of the minimal lighting setups, in the manner of John Alton.Fred Morrow, a Los Angeles real estate agent, gets off the freeway in an East L.A. The opening three shots actually seem to me a good 3 to 5 years ahead of their time, which probably indicates the generative importance for these B noir pictures.
And here a similar dark vision pervades, as does both a theme that combines class critique and existentialist tendencies. However, this one does, if less for a hard-boiled/femme fatale narrative - I like to think of a Cornell Woolrich-like strand that influences many of the B noirs.
There's a good amount of historical scholarship, revisionist and otherwise, which has called into question or at least bracketed the idee fixe of noir, and my viewing of 1947 has revealed that noir tendencies cut far and wide but that relatively few of the "noir" films live up to the canonical take.
To begin with, the film exhibits characteristics of a certain B-noir ideal type. (These tend not to be the titles with an official studio home-video release.) I am now especially eager to see more of Columbia's titles, if only to see how representative Key Witness (D. I have been making good progress on the A pictures from the major 8 studios in 1947, but need to track down and watch more of the B pictures.
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