I just saw this great black and white movie for the first time last night. What a powerful movie and what a great cast!!! If someone had told me that this movie was a William Wyler movie, I would not have believed him, since it is so different from his other movies. Basically set in the intake and holding room of one NYC police precinct, it presents a large and diverse cast of powerful stories about miscreants (or would be miscreants) in a one basic location. This movie received Oscar nominations for: Best Actress--Elenor Parker Best Supporting Actres--Lee Grant in her first motion picture Best Director----William Wyler and Best Writing, Screenplay--Philip Yordan & Robert Wyler Is this movie the first of it kind in bringing many characters into (basically) a single room?? Kirk Douglas was at his best, as far as his raw physical acting is concerned. It came out about the same year as Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. William Bendix also gives one of his best performances here too. Lee Grant is in the room for shoplifting a $6 purse. She is great as an "observer" of all the things going on around her as she waits to be "booked." In that way, she acts as sort of a Greek chorus to the main events. If I had seen this movie as an 8-year-old kid, I would have totally missed the wonderful magic of the movie and the way it was constructed. One of the central parts of the story has to do with illegal abortion, yet the word "abortion" is never used in the movie and probably would have been misunderstood if it had been. In 1951, probably few people even talked about.

Detective Story feels like a contemporary interpretation of one of Shakespeare's plays. Most of the action takes place in the NY Police 21st Precinct Building. Indeed the film is based on a stage play. Douglas is very convincing as McLeod, a moralising, black-or-white policeman, a lonely crusader in world of big-city, 24-hour crime. We get a snapshot of some of the characters that pass through his world. One of the engaging aspects to the film is that you wonder if and how one or more of these characters is going to interact with the main story. Bringing McLeod happiness during his crusade against corruption is his wife Mary, played by the graceful Eleanor Parker, who would later go on to play the spurned countess in The Sound of Music. This is the story of what happens to McLeod as he makes the painful discovery in a most personal way that his black-or-white approach to life and work is unsustainable.

William Wyler directed this police film, based on a stage play, that stars Kirk Douglas as detective James Macleod, a no-nonsense New York cop who is beset with all kinds of suspects on an eventful day, like a shoplifter(played by Lee Grant) and a burglar(played by Joseph Wiseman) but has his sights set on a callous abortionist named Schneider(played by George Macready) whose lawyer objects to James, and insists he has a personal reason for persecuting him, which is denied, but it turns out that his wife Mary(played by Eleanor Parker) has a dark secret she's withheld from James, with tragic consequences... William Bendix costars as a fellow detective and concerned friend. Though melodramatic, it contains powerful acting and skillful direction that make up for it.

It is a testament to the directorial versatility of William Wyler that he could make both a film like 'Ben-Hur', with its grand spectacle, and 'Detective Story', an adaptation of a stage play in which most of the action is conducted within one room of a New York police station. This is a fine film, that never seems stage-bound. How Wyler achieves this is something of a miracle. You hardly notice his camera, you are so absorbed in the human dramas. The story revolves around a crusading detective who seems intent on driving all the evil out of the world single-handedly. He is incorruptible, handsome, witty – and heartless and self-destructive. The story spans a single day in which he seems about to bring off a long-hoped-for arrest, until a family secret and a cunning lawyer cut the legs from under him. The story builds to a terrific climax. Several sub-plots are kept running simultaneously, as various suspects are brought into the station under arrest, but the scenario will cleverly knit these characters together. Kirk Douglas is excellent in the lead role, as is Eleanor Parker playing his wife. But the whole cast should stand and take a bow. Sixty years on, 'Detective Story' still packs a punch.