Port of New York (1949)

Two narcotics agents go after a gang of murderous drug dealers who use ships docking at the New York harbor to smuggle in their contraband.

Director:

Laslo Benedek

Writers:

Eugene Ling (screenplay), Leo Townsend (additional dialogue)

Stars:

Scott Brady, Richard Rober, K.T. Stevens

Cast

Cast overview:
Scott Brady	...	Michael 'Mickey' Waters
Richard Rober	...	Jim Flannery
K.T. Stevens	...	Toni Cardell
Yul Brynner	...	Paul Vicola
Arthur Blake	...	Dolly Carney
Lynne Carter	...	Lili Long
John Kellogg	...	Lenny
William Challee	...	Leo Stasser

Storyline

Agents Mickey Waters and John Flannery re-team to investigate the theft of medicinal narcotics from the S.S. Florentine. The vicious gang responsible is headed by the ruthless, but debonair Paul Vicola, who doesn't hesitate to murder anyone who stands in his way. Vicola's girlfriend is garroted when she becomes unreliable, and when go-between nightclub comic Dolly Carney poses a risk, he is thrown from his apartment window. After Waters is shot and killed trying to break into the gang's Brooklyn-based yacht club front, Flannery decides to go undercover and pose as a San Francicco drug dealer. The gang is smoked out and after a furious gun battle, Vicola is apprehended and his gang broken.

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Plot Keywords:

man murders a woman | man slaps a woman | narcotics | drugs | murder | 

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Taglines:

No crime too vicious ... no justice too swift for the Merchants of Death who lurk in its shadows !

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Film-Noir | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

28 November 1949 (USA)

Also Known As:

Rauschgiftbrigade

Filming Locations:

Wilmington, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Samba Pictures, Aubrey Schenck Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

82 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Film debut of Neville Brand.

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Quotes

Paul Vicola: Tie him up. Mr. Wylie's leaving the boat.

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Connections

Spoofs Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

User Reviews

A violent early salvo in what would become the War against Drugs

Sporting a head of dark, wavy hair that paradoxically emphasizes his Mongol heritage, Yul Brynner plays a debonair drug runner bringing heroin into the U.S. (We know he's a monster from the 78s of dissonant, avant-garde piano music -- Prokofiev? Shostakovich? -- he's forever playing.) When a bribed purser from a luxury liner surfaces in New York harbor with his throat slit, Brynner's fiancee/accomplice (K.T. Stevens) starts running scared and meets up with a narcotics agent (Scott Brady). Bad mistake, which Brynner swiftly and coldly corrects. The investigation heats up both on shore and on water, taking a creepy, and unexpectedly Bohemian, turn toward a cabaret emcee called Dolly (Arthur Blake) who cracks jokes and does Charles Laughton impressions with a monkey on his back. His mistakes, too, prove unpleasantly fatal. Moving closer to the heart of this particular darkness, Brady poses as someone in the drug racket, and comes close to bringing it off.... Even though, despite Russian-born Brynner's playing the villain, there's not a whisper of Soviet conspiracy in Port of New York, it eerily foreshadows both the black-and-white brutality and the smug self-righteousness of the Red Scare cycle. (In the minds of the public and elected officials, during this springtime of McCarthyism, narcotics and Communism were pretty much the same thing.) Though it lacks the ambiguity of fully developed characterizations, the movie succeeds fairly well on its own, straightforward terms -- especially in turning an over-romanticized New York into the raffish port city it essentially is, or was.