Meanwhile, on Platform Two...

Most of the action in The Narrow Margin (which we screened last week) takes place on a train, as hired killers try to locate and silence the widow of a mob boss before she can give testimony before a grand jury.

Protecting her (more or less) is the tough, grizzled detective who is prepared to do anything to make sure she reaches the witness box in once piece. By the time the train reaches Union Station, the killers have been foiled, the witness is safe, and justice has prevailed. Ah, if life were only like this.

But train stations are busy places. Lots of trains are arriving all the time, and there are many stories to be told.

This week's film places the station itself at the centre of the story, but once again concerns itself with those who would keep us safe from the dark forces that threaten Freedom, Liberty and all that good stuff that was apparently so fragile in the early 1950s.

Union Station concerns itself with Lieutenant William "Willy" Calhoun (William Holden) of the station transport police who is alerted to a possible kidnapping by a concerned passenger (Nancy Olsen).

1950 was a busy year for William Holden, who had appeared as the male lead in both Born Yesterday and Sunset Boulevard (the latter also with Nancy Olsen).

Union Station may not be as iconic as those other two classics, but it stands as an extremely stylish and genuinely tense thriller of the 1950s noir era.

As with The Narrow Margin, Union Station is the product of an era when Americans were being taught that threats to our way of life were lurking everywhere, and no aspect of our daily lives was safe. Unlike the flawed anti-heroes of earlier noir, these films tended to focus on law-enforcement types who were prepared to do anything, to break any rule, if it meant keeping us safe from the Forces of Evil.

But Union Station still speaks the language of Noir.

The cinematography is unmistakeably "noir" although much of the action was filmed in real locations (far less common in the earlier era). 

And as with The Narrow Margin, the femme fatale here is desired by no one, even though she clearly meets the criteria of a femme fatale.

Keep your eye on actress Jan Sterling, by the way. She'll be popping up again soon...

They didn't know it at the time, but films like The Narrow Margin and Union Station marked the end of an era. The age of the Hollywood Studio System was coming to an end, threatened as it was on multiple fronts (the anti-Communist witch-hunts, the rise of television ownership, the new antitrust laws...). Soon, film-makers would be turning to widescreen; stereophonic sound; 3D... anything to revive the dropping attendance figures. 

And the tone of films would change as well. Much of the characteristic "flavour" of noir came from the absolute inflexibility of the Hays Office censorship codes. But falling sales figures and a shifting social climate were already revealing cracks in the film industry's devotion to those codes.

Hollywood films of the next ten years were going to be dealing much more openly with sex, violence, corruption... indeed anything which they thought might look enticing on an advertising banner.

But not quite yet.

Hollywood was a busy, bustling network of activity, with lots of projects in the works simultaneously. Much like a rail network, when you think about it.

It would be a while before the trains were disrupted.

We will screen Union Station at 7.30 on Thursday, the 22nd of May at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.