Union Station

United States

1950

81 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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SCR Sydney Boehm, Thomas Walsh

CAST William Holden, Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald, Lyle Bettger, Jan Sterling, Allene Roberts, Herbert Heyes, Don Dunning, Fred Graff, James Seay, Parley Baer, Ralph Sanford, Richard Karlan, Bigelow Sayre, Charles Dayton, Jean Ruth, Paul Lees, Harry Hayden

PROD DES Hans Dreier, A. Earl Hedrick

SOUND Gene Garvin, Hugo Grenzbach

Synopsis

Returning to the city from her wealthy employer residence, Joyce Willecombe, spots two armed men on the train. She reports them to the conductor who radios in to the Station’s police. Once at Union station she points out the men to Lt. William Calhoun, head of the station’s police squad and they find out that the gunmen are members of a gang who have kidnapped her employer’s blind daughter and are seeking a $100,000 ransom. The Chicago police headed by inspector Donnelly, and the FBI are both called in. The action in this classic Film Noir culminates in a chase through the station’s underground tunnels. Directed by Rudolph Maté (D.O.A.). —Olive Films

Director

Rudolph Maté

Rudolph Maté (1898-1964) became an assistant cameraman for Alexander Korda in Hungarian films of the late teens. In the mid ‘20s he lensed some of Carl Dreyer’s Mika’l, and became cinematographer for Dreyer’s classics La Passion De Jeanne D’Arc and Vampyr. After working in France on Fritz Lang’s Liliom and Rene Clair’s Le Dernier Milliardaire, Mate came to Hollywood in 1935. Here he shot such notable films as Our Relations with Laurel and Hardy, William Wyler’s Dodsworth, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, Korda’s That Hamilton Woman, and Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be. Mate began directing in 1947 with the comedy It Had to Be You, which he co-directed with Don Hartman. As a director Mate is most fondly remembered for his early films, the noirs The Dark Past and D.O.A., and producer George Pal’s apocalyptic science-fictioner When Worlds Collide. —allmovie guide