THE NARROW MARGIN
(RKO-Radio) THE NARROW MARGIN is one of those thrillers that turns up with little fanfare now and then to remind us that established directors like Alfred Hitchcock aren’t the only ones who can do this sort of thing well. You can’t get away from Hitchcock in this one; it’s set, like The Lady Vanishes, on a train, and a leading character, a fat train detective (Paul Maxey), more than faintly suggests the old master’s inevitable appearances in his own films, I shan’t tell the story, but it concerns the -efforts of a detective (Charles McGraw) to give safe escort to a state witnessa woman-on an express going from Chicago to Los Angeles. You may feel, looking along the swaying corridor, that you’ve been here before; but it’s all in the way it’s done, and this one has been directed by Robert Fleischer skilfully and imaginatively. As the climax of the action approaches and a gangster’s car keeps alongside the train to take off the villains when their work is done, the film develops a tempo of sight and sound which stayed with me for a long time. I couldn't help contrasting this and the film's agreeably human touches with the unexciting and uni-
formly pointless crudity of the recent unfortunate affaire Spillane.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540813.2.44.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 786, 13 August 1954, Page 22
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215THE NARROW MARGIN New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 786, 13 August 1954, Page 22
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