Detective Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) is given the task of escorting Frankie Neall (Maria Windsor), the wife of a mob boss, across country by train. The mob has sent a group of assassins to kill her, though they don’t know what she looks like. They mistake an innocent woman on the train (Jacqueline White) for their target, but then, a lot of people aren’t who they seem to be.
Tense and claustrophobic, The Narrow Margin is the top of the second tier of Film Noir. There’s no let up and no rest. Murders could be anywhere and anyone and there’s no way to know until it is too late. But it is even worse as nothing can be trusted, including the mission. Lies and deceit are all around.
Brown is coarse, and not-so-much heroic as dutiful. He does what he needs to, but he doesn’t like it. I’m not sure he likes anything. He is certainly hard to like. Neall is worse. She’s vulgar and hateful. She’s turned on the mob, but not due to any sense of justice, and would be happy to sell out for a profit if she could figure out a way to do it and survive. She’s everything Brown knew she would be, but then he’d decided what she was without knowing anything about her. Their opponents are blatant thugs, secretive killers, and a slimy businessman. We are deep into Noir, in a world that is never safe, and those who aren’t evil are unpleasant.
There’s some great twists late in the film, and clever dialog all the way through. The Narrow Margin isn’t beautiful the way the best Noirs are, but it is well shot for its small budget. McGraw is generic as the lead, but Windsor is superb, sexy and overflowing with character. The rest of the cast is solid, except for a child, whose character should have been written out on the second draft. This is no gem, but an enjoyable semi-precious stone.
Studio boss Howard Hughes got involved in post-production, with suggested changes that fell between unnecessary to horrendous to impossible (such as his idea of re-filming all scenes with McGraw and Windsor with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell). Few of his ideas made it in and they only slightly damaged the film, but I’d like to see it in the original form. The biggest change was cutting corruption in the police force—Hughes didn’t like anything questioning the integrity of the police. It is clear while watching that Brown’s partner was on the take—the way the scene is shot, with him stepping away to light his cigar, is a giveaway. But there’s no payoff for this at the end, as there should be, making The Narrow Margin a little less Noir than it should be.