Hopelessly hamstrung by the requirements of the Production Code, The Unknown Man is a rather nasty piece of filmmaking, when you come down to it. Walter Pidgeon is fine as the defense lawyer who mistakenly frees a young killer, played with fresh faced ineptitude by Keefe Braselle, but the machinations set into motion by Pidgeon's fatal encounter with the slimy Crime Commission bigwig, played brilliantly by Eduard Franz, are hopelessly unrealistic. That leads some to conclude this is an entry in the noir cycle, but it plays more like a police procedural, with police captain Barry Sullivan successfully sniffing out the truth. Besides Franz and Pidgeon, the acting highlights are provided by Konstantin Shayne as an elderly shopkeeper victimized by shakedown men. Ultimately, though, The Unknown Man is a lesson in Old Testament justice, with murderers and their victims filling in as Sunday School sermon illustrations. If you can get over the moralizing, however, this is a decent minor picture.
Review of The Unknown Man
