Boomerang!

In a small Connecticut city a priest is shot from behind on a busy street. The press and the voters apply pressure, the police find a suspect and the man confesses. Henry Harvey, the state's attorney handed the case, becomes convinced as he goes through the evidence that the defendant is not guilty. What follows is not a hunt for the killer but a man standing against his own side. Elia Kazan directed. Dana Andrews, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Arthur Kennedy are in the cast. The events are real. In 1924 in Bridgeport a well-liked priest, Father Hubert Dahme, was shot behind the ear at close range on the main street in full public view. Homer Cummings, the state's attorney for Fairfield County, pushed the investigation and established that the arrested man was innocent. Cummings later became Attorney General of the United States under Roosevelt. The film renames him Henry Harvey. Kazan wanted to shoot in Bridgeport, where it happened, and was refused permission, so most of the film was made in Stamford. The manner is semi-documentary: real streets, real buildings and a narrator from outside. One small detail: in the identity parade Kazan's friend, the playwright Arthur Miller, makes a brief appearance as a vagrant struggling with the police. Who it is for: viewers who like the noir period and courtroom stories drawn from real files. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clean ending. The real murder was never solved and the film does not solve it either.