Don't listen to the negative reviews

Best movie ever!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A melodrama about intrepid Assistant D.A. Franchot Tone breaking up a racist 'hate' group called 'The Crusaders'; 'Jigsaw' on paper resembles a rather bold US independent equivalent to Costa-Gavras's Oscar-winning political thriller 'Z' (1969). It also rather recalls Hitchcock's wartime anti-Nazi thriller 'Saboteur' (1942), even down to a memorably sinister cocktail party peopled with wealthy and well-connected reactionaries; plenty of the talk about racism and bigotry still sounds disturbingly topical today. Having made such a bold attack on the far right in their maiden production at the very moment that Hollywood's attention was turning full-time to The Red Menace, it's hardly surprising that the film's producers, the Danziger Brothers, relocated to Britain in 1952.Unfortunately, even though plenty of people get shot, once the shock of the film's crusading politics wears off, the whole thing proves disappointingly diffuse and uninvolving. Don Malkames provides plenty of good noirish photography (concluding with a splendid nighttime shootout in a museum), but first-time director Fletcher Markle (whose best-known directing credit was to be the Disney adventure 'The Incredible Journey' in 1963) is too often plainly trying too hard.A final credit at the end informs us that it "was filmed with the obvious good will of many famous stars", which explains the bewildering cameo appearances by several Hollywood liberals of the period (two of whom - John Garfield and Marsha Hunt - were later actually blacklisted); Marlene Dietrich, exits a scene set in a nightclub called - what else? - 'The Blue Angel' just as Henry Fonda walks into the same shot playing a waiter. These star cameos ironically vie for attention with a regular cast comprised almost entirely of then unknowns presumably recruited from radio and Broadway, including vivid contributions from Myron McCormick, Marc Lawrence, Doe Avedon (making a charming debut under the name 'Betty Harper), Winifred Lenihan, Walter Vaughan (Robert's father, playing the D.A.) and Robert Gist (later a TV director, including 'Star Trek').

I got this film from one of those public domain mega-packs on DVD. While this is not a bad film, I can see why the film makers didn't bother renewing the copyright--it just wasn't all that interesting. Most of the problem seems to be with the writing. The plot seems to bounce all over the place and where the film began seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with where it ended. Had all the dull moments and irrelevant plots been eliminated or polished, I really would have enjoyed the film a lot more than I did.Franchot Tone plays a prosecutor with the DA's office who is initially looks into the case of a White supremacist who might have been murdered. Whether or not this is the case is uncertain, but when Tone's newspaper friend is killed when he tries investigating (again, it was made to look like a suicide), he knows that there is some sort of conspiracy afoot. However, instead of trying to bash heads and get to the bottom of it, he infiltrates an organization that might be behind all this--as well as buying and selling public officials.As I said, the writing was pretty poor. However, for film nuts like myself, it's still worth seeing for all the strange and unexpected cameos, such as Henry Fonda and John Garfield (among others). Not a good movie but it has enough to it that it isn't a total waste of time seeing it--not exactly a glowing review, huh?!

... There has to be a limit. This movie is pretty much a mess. It doesn't feel like New York City, of which I am a native and almost-lifetime resident. It has too many plots going at once. They add up but only with force on the part of the writers.It starts out as a sort of Northern "Storm Warning." (Now, there we have a superb, underrated movie!) I guess the racist posters that set off the plot are symbolic of the beginning of the McCarthy witch-hunts. If they aren't, they don't make any sense: OK, granted: According to my parents Manhattan at that time was not always friendly to people other than Caucasians. But were there actually plots and mobs? I can't believe it.The casting gives it some noir cred. I'm not talking about the brief cameos by big stars. Nor,really, about Franchot Tone. He is OK but he isn't exactly a noir staple and he's maybe a bit old for the role.But we have Jean Wallace. We have Marc Lawrence.For me, the single best feature of the film is the presence in a fairly small but significant role of an actress I had never before tonight heard of: Winifred Lenihan.I see that she was the first person to play the title role in Shaw's "St. Joan" on Broadway. She is in very different territory here. But whoever cast her did so with genius: She is absolutely perfect.Also, I wonder about the character played by Hedley Rainnie. He's ambiguous in many ways. He wears a beard and maybe that's meant to signify his foreign origins. I wonder, though: Is he intended to be gay? The way the character is portrayed reminds me of the intentionally creepy go-between for the Senator and his ex lover in the better known and overrated "Advise and Consent" almost a decade later.It isn't a good movie, in sum. And the print I saw was really bad. But watch it for Ms. Lenihan. In a very quiet way, she's brilliant!

***SPOILERS*** Way ahead of it's time movie that disclosed to the movie going public back in 1949 that there's a sub rosa government working independently from the laws that govern all of us. Which it's far more destructive then any outside enemy, like at that time the Soviet Union, ever was. Hard to follow at first when we see a man Max Von Brog murdered at his printing shop on 506 East 31 st in Midtown Manhattan by a hood known as Knuckles, George Breen. Mr. Borgs wife, Hester Sondergaad, claims that her husband committed suicide. Later she's picked up at the airport trying to flee the country to Mexico City terrified of those who murdered her husband and feeling that she might well be next. Mrs. Von Borg is put into protective custody by Assistant D.A Malloy, Franchot Tone. Local columnist Charles Riggs, Myron McCormick, feels that those who murdered Von Borg, whom he was printing leaflets and posters for, are highly connected in government and that the suspicion of them belonging to some hate group "The Crusaders". A subversive group that his friend and Assistant D.A Howard Malloy thinks are just a front for their real activities. Later when Riggs goes home to his apartment he's murdered by Knuckles and like Max Von Borg Knuckles makes it look like Riggs killed himself by throwing him out the window.Malloy now with a personal reason to find the killer and those behind him starts making inroads into this group "The Crusaders". Malloy starts by tracking down the person who did the art work for their posters a Mrs. Sigmund Kosterich, Hedley Rainne. It's from Kosterich where he gets the name of a young woman Barbara Whitfield, Jean Wallace, who he's doing a painting of and also seems to be involved with this mysterious group.Going home one evening Malloy is attacked by Knuckles who he knocks out and disarms. After checking his wallet Malloy finds a business card for a person call "The Angel" Angelo Agostini, Marc Lawrence. It turns out that "The Angel" runs some charity outfit in the city. After Malloy has a talk with "The Angel" everything seems to open up for him where he's appointed Special Prosecutor by the Governor. This after he met with Mrs. Hartley a major NYC political king-makers at a big social party who's also a close associate of "The Angle". It seems that those in power, Agostini Mrs. Hartley etc. etc., are trying to buy off Malloy to keep him from finding who and whom their working for. But it doesn't work with the brave and honest Malloy and leads to a shocking and bloody final in the movie. It turned out that the group "The Crusaders" were just a cover and a microscopic part of the real power clique that controls the city of New York if not the entire country.Ground-breaking film who's story has been copied hundreds of times since it's release back in 1949 about those in power who answer to no one but themselves. With both Franchot Tone & Jean Wallace very effective in their parts as the somewhat naive D.A. Who finds out the truth the hard and deadly way. With Jean Wallace as the young singer who also finds out, too late, that she's into something that she had no idea of how dangerous it was.The movie "Jigsaw" has a number of top Hollywood stars in cameo roles and top NYC news & gossip columnist Leonard Lyon who wrote the popular "The Lyons Den" newspaper column. That showed just how important the movie was to them for them to want to be in it. Only the ending was a bit too contrived and phony but with the Hayes Commission back then controlling the US film industry a happy ending was a must in a disturbing as well as dark Film-Noir movie like "Jigsaw".