Synopsis
Detective Story (1951) is William Wyler's tight crime drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Almost the entire film unfolds across a single day inside one Manhattan police precinct, where pickpockets, embezzlers and ruined people drift through the squad room.
Kirk Douglas plays Detective Jim McLeod, a cop who sees the law in hard black and white and nothing in between. He has spent years trying to put away Schneider, a back-alley doctor, and he'll beat a confession out of a suspect when the evidence runs thin. Then, over one shift, the case stops mattering — a secret from his wife's past (Eleanor Parker) surfaces and lands harder than any criminal could.
Wyler adapted Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play and kept its claustrophobic feel, rarely letting the camera leave that cramped room. The picture drew four Oscar nominations and marked the screen debut of Lee Grant, who took the acting prize at Cannes for it. A talky, unsentimental slice of old Hollywood. Stream Detective Story (1951) online on iFILM.
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