Watching the Detectives: Kirk Douglas is Detective Jim McLeod in Detective Story
While the word “detective” may appear three times in the title of this post, William Wyler’s film version of the play by Sidney Kingsley isn’t really about catching criminals or solving crimes. Instead it examines the working environment of a group of cops, focusing primarily on Jim McLeod.
McLeod lives for two things - his beautiful wife Mary and putting away crooks. There’s no flexibility to his interpretation of the law, you’re either a crook or your not, and if you are you should be punished. When a case he’s working on ties in with his wife’s past his black and white world is shattered.
William Wyler really knows how to get the most from a confined location (most of the film takes place inside the Precinct house) and it’s something he’d do again with The Desperate Hours a few years down the line. Not that he couldn’t do big pictures, you can’t get much bigger than Big Country and Ben-Hur. In fact if there’s a complaint that can be levelled at him, it’s that he didn’t make enough films. Rather than try and open the film up, he embraces its set bound, stage origins and by doing so focuses the viewer’s attention where it belongs - on the actors.
