The Captive City

A detective comes to Jim Austin, who runs the newspaper in a small town, and tells him about the betting operation working in the city. Austin does not believe it at first. The more he digs, the more he finds not one bookmaker but a network reaching into the town's police and its business circles. The threats begin. He and his wife have to leave town. Robert Wise's film is a crime picture shot to look like a documentary. It was made on real locations and in deep focus, photographed by Lee Garmes. At the end of the film Senator Estes Kefauver, who chaired the senate committee investigating organised crime, addresses the audience from his own desk. Kefauver was running for the presidential nomination at the time, and the film was argued over on that ground too.