Overly pure politician Joseph Foster (Thomas Mitchell) says out loud that he’d sell his soul to convict a mob boss. Nick Beal (Ray Milland) appears at that moment with the needed information. Foster begins to fall under Beal’s influence. Beal brings drunken actress Donna Allen (Audrey Totter) in to romance Foster, and gangster Frankie Faulkner (Fred Clark) to support him, all part of of his plan to corrupt Foster.
Alias Nick Beal is Faust, in modern times, shot in the style of Film Noir. It also has Noir’s fondness for broken people and corruption. What it doesn’t have is interesting human characters. I suspect the problem is the times and the production code. 1949 wasn’t a time for a serious movie with the Devil. They couldn’t take it where it needed to go, with a cop-out ending, and had to bow to good Christian morals. So Foster is ridiculously, unrealistically pure. His wife is the equivalent of a missionary. The trollop isn’t sleazy at all, but constantly wants to do the right thing. It makes it very hard to root for the good guys when they are so sickeningly sweet.
What Alias Nick Beal does have, besides some claustrophobic and spooky expressionist shots, is Ray Milland as a spectacular Mephistopheles. It’s one of his best performances. He displays the proper amount of menace mixed with class. He gets the best dialog:
The last time I was here was quite exciting. City was on fire. Picked up quite a lot of recruits that night. Made quite a transportation problem.
But it is more how he says the words than the words themselves, always sure of himself, always a touch tired. Milland joins Robert De Niro, Walter Huston, and Viggo Mortensen in the club of finest portrayals of the Prince of Darkness. I wish the whole film had been as good, but with Milland’s performance and the cinematography, this is a movie to see.