T-MEN

T-MEN (1947)

Starring Dennis O’Keefe, Charles McGraw, Alfred Ryder, June Lockhart; dir: Anthony Mann

The ‘T’ stands for ‘Treasury’, whose agents (aligned with the Secret Service) resonate with G-Men in this quasi-documentary style account of an actual counterfeiting investigation, ‘The Shanghai Paper Case’.

Mann’s T-Men is a surprisingly un-prole thriller for such an extremely dark gangster noir. Its environments linger in managers' offices, luxury pads and specialist labs giving it more the air of a chiaroscuro corporate struggle (albeit a violent one) than a back-alley gang war. This impression is strengthened by cinematographer John Alton’s predilection here for shots of long corridors, suggesting flows of institutional power. They reinforce its odd mix of rarefied air and extreme darkness.

Nevertheless this is a truly underworld excursion. With its dark aesthetic we feel totally submerged, almost underwater and certainly cut off from any elements of ‘known’ life. Hence the impact on the viewer of its riff of identity transference and shifting personas as the agents go undercover. Because it is so all-consuming we respond almost as viscerally as its protagonists do, making the shocks that come – and their psychological violence – felt, rather than merely seen.

T-Men is renowned for this subtext of Janus-like duality, attracting noir cred for suggestions of cops internally crossing the line and their vicarious evil becoming a bit too natural. Certainly Dennis O’Keefe takes to the more superficial aspects of his deep cover role with relish, flipping cards, dressing crassly, etc. But undue emphasis on this dualism diminishes the artistry of the filmmakers here – we don’t want O’Keefe mugging for the camera to remind us he’s really a good guy like it's some Burt Reynolds movie. T-Men is the product of artists who wouldn’t pander and made films for adult viewers. Its toughness is part of its high quality and it has a deserved reputation for being unusually objective rather than romanticising the participants in crime. This is reflected in 21st century audiences’ sombre, respectful viewing of it.

Something else that’s unusual is remarked upon by the film’s voiceover. This is the gang’s unusually clandestine and highly organised nature. This has led to retrospective interpretations seeing T-Men as a paradigm of espionage movies. Such a McCarthyist reading (see Carlos Clarens’ Crime Movies) sees the counterfeiters – who after all are foreign derived cells of anti-Uncle Sam activity – as Commies manqué.

Certainly John Alton’s uber-dark cinematography does carry the suggestion of a shadow hanging over the country. But for this viewer, such an interpretation only works in the head, not in my gut. In essence the film plays like a straight, unvarnished thriller. These guys aren’t fifth columnists, they’re hoods! It’s true that T-Men is overly encrusted with kitsch newsreel-style propaganda (the voiceover, ‘public service announcement’ introduction, etc) but it comes across as if the Hollywood/Washington nexus was still fighting the last war, not the next one. It does make an interesting reflection on how addicted America became in the 40s to its war footing (a state of affairs which would become institutionalised in the military-industrial complex to come).

For all this seriousness there’s inadvertent humor too, particularly in the bathhouse investigation: "Have you ever spent ten days in steam baths looking for a man?" asks O’Keefe after tracking down bit player ‘The Schemer’. Bill Collins was more coy: "One could also question the true nature of the relationship between The Schemer and his murderer…", suggests Bill in his Golden Years of Hollywood anthology.

As Images Journal points out, longtime Mann collaborator Alton loves steam, fog and smoke and T-Men’s murder-by-steam scene has spawned countless imitators. It was restaged (so closely as to be homage - intentionally or not) by Paul Schrader in his superb Blue Collar (1978) with Yaphet Kotto going down in the Dodge Main paint room, a particularly grisly death. But the Mann/Alton noirs are no strangers to grisly violence either, with an ear assault here that makes one wince in memory of the hearing-aid torture in the Alton/Lewis The Big Combo.

The team of Mann and Alton is arguably the greatest collaboration in noir, as evinced by Raw Deal, T-Men, Border Incident and He Walked By Night (Mann uncredited). Suggestions of a noir repertory arise from the other elements common to T-Men and Raw Deal - Dennis O’Keefe and music from ‘B’ legend Paul Sawtell. It all adds up to T-Men being an intriguing film whose impact lingers well after the viewing experience.

* Thanks to Konrad Lenz for the insights concerning Blue Collar.

Roger Westcombe's own website is at: http://www.bighousefilm.com/

For additional material on Anthony Mann and 'T-Men' you might want to look at:

David Boxwell, "Anthony Mann - Emil Anton Bundmann", at:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/mann_anthony.html

Gary Johnson on the release to video of three Anthony Mann films in Images, #2, at: http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/reviews/mannoirs.htm

Steve Badger's 'Mann Movies: A Guide to the Films of Anthony Mann', at: http://www.suspense-movies.com/directors/anthony-mann/

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