Desperate

Steve Randall is a truck driver, newly married, trying to build up his own business. One night a job comes along that pays well. When he gets there he sees the load is stolen and that a gang has used him. In the attempt to get away a policeman is shot; the brother of the gang's boss, Walt Radak, is caught and sentenced to death. What Radak wants is this: if his brother is executed, Randall dies at the same hour. Randall takes his wife and runs. The police and the gang are both after him, and she is pregnant. Anthony Mann directs the American film; seventy-three minutes, with Steve Brodie as Randall and Raymond Burr as Radak. It is among Mann's first films noir, and with its small budget and scenes played at night under a single bulb it is one of the most frequently cited examples of the form.