GManfred This picture tries hard to recommend itself and tries hard to be a good Noir. It really does. And I tried hard to like it and recommend it and give it a good rating. Honest. But it won't let you. The plot is too muddled and the Director is not good enough to put it over.Granted, he had some good actors in Franchot Tone and Myron McCormick. He also had a love interest who was a knockout in Jean Wallace, but she was a chore as an actress - in a climactic scene she flops badly - but what a knockout, to borrow a '40's phrase.Well, that's about it. Confusing plot and a tepid, preachy story. I stuck with it because it was pouring outside. I gave it a rating of 5, but I gave Jean Wallace a 10...aesthetically speaking.

edgeplayer Many purists will find this film not a noir. A great deal of the cinematography,lighting and camera angles, however, is textbook noir and this alone makes the film worth watching. Jean Wallace plays herself but it's a great play. The main character is sufficiently morally ambiguous--he knows his promotion comes from dubious sources and when he defeats these sources we don't see him disavowing the new job. The political angle doesn't work today in the way it might have at the time; watching this 1949 film today it's worth recalling that this was a period, just before McCarthy and Korea, when everything seemed up for grabs in the U.S. Prosperity was still, for a lot of folks, 'just around the corner' and the film in some ways portrays the fear that Nazis, communists, whoever, had infiltrated social and political elites. The director and others involved were part of the Mercury Theater grouping, associated in various ways with Orson Welles. There's a remarkable sequence in the party scene in the middle of the film where the camera assumes first person position...a bit like the earlier Lady in the Lake by Robert Montgomery, for a few minutes. I found the use of voice-over and first person camera an interesting wrinkle on noir's interrogation if the 'inner subject.' Markle would go on to head the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and had earlier worked as an uncredited screenwriter for Orson Welles.

Michael_Elliott JIGSAW (1949) ** 1/2 (out of four) After his reporter friend is murdered, a D.A. goes off looking for the killers. Once again, the 1940's delivered all sorts of gems within the noir genre. This film here has quite a good reputation but I personally found it to be quite slow and boring in spots. The performances are all good but the director isn't able to get much out of the story and in the end nothing makes too much sense. Seeing stars like John Garfield and Henry Fonda is always great but their cameos add very little to the film.Available on DVD through various PD companies.

sol1218 ***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".