South Of Nowhere-Claire Trevor And Fred MacMurry’s “Borderline” (1950)-A Film Review

DVD Review   

By Sam Lowell

Borderline, starring Claire Trevor, Fred MacMurry, Raymond Burr, 1950    

As long as people love their dope, their marijuana, guys will try to move heaven and earth to bring the “produce” to their doors. (Although with recent liberalized and decriminalized efforts to take that particular drug out of shadow economy in some states there will presumably be less aura of criminal lure about the thing). That is the presumption behind this 1950 film noir with a twist Borderline (the twist being some funny scenes that don’t normally make sense in a noir, seem like a send-up of serious noir like The Big Sleep and Out Of The Past where nobody is laughing-except grimly grinding their teeth).  

The plot otherwise (a B-film plot in any case) is pretty conventional for this kind of off-beat police procedural. The people want their dope, it is illegal, and guys will take great risks and great profits to satisfy that market down in sunny Mexico where the stuff was produced in huge quantities. Still is. So a guy like Pete Ritchie, played by Raymond Burr last seen as Perry Mason-a good guy lawyer-but here as a low down dope dealer, will go to any lengths to keep the profits flowing south and the product flowing north. And of course various local, state and federal law enforcement agencies want to rain on guys like Ritchie’s parade. But drug lords don’t get to be drug lords without a serious security system and the coppers are stymied until they can get agents working on the inside-presuming that they can keep out of each other’s way.      

That last remark applies double here since two agencies try to get inside Pete’s operation at the same time. One, Johnny, played by Fred MacMurry last seen here sweating out a gunshot wound after playing with fire, playing with a deadly femme in Double Indemnity and the other Madeleine, played by Claire Trevor last seen in these precincts putting a few slugs in Moose Malloy in the classic Murder, My Sweet (Farewell, My Lovely when Raymond Chandler wrote the crime novel). Neither know that the other is a drug agent working to get dear Pete off the streets and into the nearest cell. They go through their paces, through their comedy of errors as both try to get the other (and the dope) to the border for the collar. Along the way a lot of goofy stuff happens and a lot of danger but they see it through. Oh yeah and like in any such story they fall for each other not knowing that the other shoe is going to drop on one of them. Not to worry old Pete gets snagged in Mexico and the kingpin of the whole operation gets bagged in L.A. –and the dope agents go about their love business. A quirky film.