(aka 'L'Enigme du Chicago Express" or "The Target')

  Charles McGraw plays edgy cop Walter Brown. His job is to protect a dead racketeer's wife, Mrs. Neil (Marie Windsor) from the mob. She's a key witness in a grand jury probe, and also has a payoff list linking gang members to the LAPD. Most of the film's action takes place on board the train taking Brown and Neil to Los Angeles, where she will testify. In Mrs. Neil, played to perfection by Windsor, the queen of B movies, the tough talking, wise-cracking Brown meets his match. On the way to meet her, he glibly tells his partner, Gus Forbes that "She's the sixty cent special. Cheap. Flashy. Sticky poison under the gravy." When he and Forbes, both from Los Angeles, first meet her, she says, "How nice. How Los Angeles." Then looking Brown up and down, she snarls, "Sunburn wear off on the way?" My favorite wisecrack occurs after Brown has finally had enough of her wise remarks and lashes out, "You make me sick to my stomach." Her retaliation is a gem: "Well, use your own sink." Unlike the banter between Nick and Noira Charles of The Thin Man series, there's nothing the least sophisticated about the way Brown and Neil talk each other. Director Richard Fleischer uses inventive camera work, the sounds of the train rather than a music score, and the train's claustrophobic atmosphere to create and sustain tension. An RKO picture, The Narrow Margin is an unpretentious, taut low-budget thriller, a minor classic far superior to the 1990 Gene Hackman-Anne Archer remake.

Excerpt from Roger Zotti's comments on IMdb located HERE

Posters

Theatrical Release: May 3rd, 1952 - NY, NY - USA

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Recommended Reading in Film Noir (CLICK COVERS or TITLES for more information)

The Third Man by Graham Greene	The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir by Foster Hirsch	Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City by Nicholas Christopher	Shades of Noir: A Reader by Joan Copjec	The Art of Noir: The Posters and Graphics from the Classic Era of Film Noir by Eddie Muller	The Little Black and White Book of Film Noir: Quotations from Films of the 40's and 50's by Peg Thompson, Saeko Usukawa	Film Noir by Alain Silver	Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959 by Michael F. Keaney	Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir by Foster Hirsch

DVD Review: Éditions Montparnasse (re-release) - Region 2 - PAL

Screen captures courtesy of Herb Kane