The Hunted (1948)

THE HUNTED  (1948)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Jack Bernhard
    Preston Foster, Belita, Pierre Watkin,
    Russell Hicks, Frank Ferguson, Edna Holland,
    Charles McGraw, Cathy Carter, George Chandler
A film noir in which everything doubles back on itself, about a police detective who starts to fall for the girl he sent up on a diamond-heist rap four years before. Now she's out on parole and tells him she's going straight and he wants to believe her, but he's not sure he can trust her, and she does act mighty suspicious for somebody who insists she was innocent all along. She's also threatened to kill him, and this is film noir, so where do you go from there? There are some impressively long takes in this, and George Chandler, who played W.C. Fields' errant son in "The Fatal Glass of Beer", steals a scene or two as a bartender who bends the detective's ear with a lot of unwanted advice.