#395 – Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (1947)
Dick Tracy’s Dilemma (1947)
Film review #395
Director: John Rawlins
SYNOPSIS: A robbery at a vault full of furs also leaves one person dead and a suspicious insurance claim. Homicide detective Dick Tracy and his partner Pat Patton are put on the case where they investigate the involvement of a man known only as “the Claw”…
THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Dick Tracy’s Dilemma is a 1947 film and the third Dick Tracy feature film. The film opens up with a robbery being committed on a safe at a storage facility. The watchman attempts to intervene, but later when it is found that he is missing, homicide detective Dick Tracy and his partner Pat Patton are put on the case and find the safe, which was supposed to be full of imported furs, empty. Tracy investigates the involvement of the vault’s insurance company, as well as the involvement of a man known only as “The Claw”. The story is very similar to the other two films of the series, with a murder investigation being the primary thread running through the film, with lots of little investigations and twists tying into it. The runtime of sixty minutes is again similar to its predecessors, which keeps everything streamlined and without unnecessary filler. It is well paced with a variety of locations and colourful characters to keep things interesting.
The most notable element of this film compared to the others is the return of Ralph Byrd to the role of Dick Tracy in place of Morgan Conway from the first two. Byrd starred as Tracy in the four movie serials released between 1941 and 1947, and his return is very much welcome. While Conway probably looked more like the Dick Tracy from the comics, Byrd has a much more likeable charm and personality, and just seems to fit in better with the other cast members. The rest of the cast also has plenty of personality, and embody the type of comic book characters of the original format, with the ridiculously cartoony names and all. Tess Trueheart as Tracy’s girlfriend returns, and is a better fit with Byrd’s Tracy, as she always looked far too young to be Conway Tracy’s girlfriend. The English theatre actor Vitamin (see what I mean about cartoony names?) as some comic relief and eccentricity, along with the accident prone Pat Patton. The Claw himself is also fairly menacing, but is very similar to the other villains in the earlier films. The film balances the gritty crime-noir aesthetics with high contrast lighting and dramatic angles with these comic-esque characters that would appeal to a younger audience. Again, the film balances these two genres very well without undermining one another.
There is not much else to say about this film that I didn’t mention in my reviews of the earlier ones. Dick Tracy’s Dilemma, following its predecessors, has hit a sweet spot balancing crime-noir with a comic book style that can appeal to a wide range of viewers (which is what you want in a feature film). It doesn’t change much from the previous films, and sticks very much to the sixty minute runtime, but again it doesn’t need to really innovate if it already has a successful formula. The return of Ralph Byrd to the role of Dick Tracy is certainly the only tweak the formula needed to make. Another solid entry in the series, even if it lacks anything innovative.
