I dig movies set in one of my home towns: New Orleans and San Francisco. This week’s film showcases what the legendary Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called Baghdad by the Bay. That was before either Gulf War, so it’s not as weird as it sounds today.

Herb Caen was also the one who taught me that friends don’t let friends say Frisco. Every time I hear it, I cringe. It’s the same thing that happens when I hear about former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome’s podcast. The malakatude, it burns.

1958 was a banner year for movies set in San Francisco. The most famous film is Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Today’s movie also comes from that year, Don Siegel’s The Lineup. It’s not as well-known but it shows off The City just as well as Vertigo without making one dizzy, until the end, that is.

The Lineup has something else in common with Hitchcock. A MacGuffin drives the plot. In this instance it’s objects d’art from Asia, which contain heroin. The smack-filled objects are carried by unwitting smugglers. The criminals dispatch three men to recover the contraband: The driver played by Richard Jaeckel, a sociopath nicknamed Dancer played by the great Eli Wallach, and Robert Keith who is a psycho whisperer there to calm Wallach down. It’s a full time job:

The first act of the film is strictly procedural as we watch the cops try to find out who the smugglers are and the location of the MacGuffins. Procedurals have always been big on TV: The Lineup is one of the first big screen spinoffs from a TV series. Naturally, there’s a lineup:

The guy second from the right resembles Whitey Bulger. It’s a year too early to be the Boston based bad guy: Bulger wasn’t transferred to Alcatraz until 1959. The Rock was also the subject of a later and better known Don Siegel movie, Escape From Alcatraz.

The detectives are the least interesting thing about the movie, so let’s get back to the criminals.

Eli Wallach’s MacGuffin recovery methods are rough to say the least. He’s a shoot first ask questions later kinda crook. This shooting is the first of many great set pieces in The Lineup:

Hitchcock wasn’t the only film director who knew from set pieces, so did Don Siegel who got his start making montages at Warner Brothers including for Casablanca.

Befitting his nickname, Eli Wallach performs a series of death dances at other San Francisco locations before latching on to a mother and daughter played by Mary LaRoche and Cheryl Callaway who were unwitting smugglers. The sinister meet cute occurs at one of my favorite spots as a kid, the Steinhart Aquarium at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park:

Eli Wallach seems to be contemplating shooting a Sea Turtle. He did not. Instead, he and the gang give the mother and child a ride home then abduct them after destroying the girl’s doll in a futile search for the heroin.

Another favorite spot of my younger self that turns up in the movie is Sutro’s Baths and Museum, which as we say in New Orleans, ain’t dere no more.

Wallach goes  to Lands End to meet the gangster who hired him. They exchange threats, then in another fabulous set piece Wallach makes like Richard Widmark in Kiss Of Death and pushes the wheelchair bound mobster over the railing. I couldn’t find an image of that so this picture just will have to do:

We go from wheelchair man to wheelman as the movie winds up with a car chase scene through The City:

The gang is cornered on  I-480 aka the Embarcadero Freeway, which was then under construction but came down after 1989’s Loma Prieta earthquake. The hostages are saved but Eli Wallach is doomed after this jerk move:

I thoroughly enjoyed rewatching this fine film. Don Siegel’s direction is brilliant as is the script by Sterling Silliphant and the cinematography by Hal Mohr who was born and in raised in San Francisco. They bring the city by the bay to life in a way that few movies do.

Grading Time: This is a tough one. If not for the slow-moving beginning, it would be a stone cold classic as it becomes when Eli Wallach electrifies the screen as the psychotic Dancer. It’s his finest and scariest performance.

I give The Lineup 3 1/2 stars and an Adrastos Grade of B+. It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Let’s turn our attention to the movie’s graphics. We begin with side-by-side long sheets. On the right is the Italian poster: the title translates as Silent Crime. Why? Wallach uses a silencer in his murder spree. I’ll shut up now.

I find myself craving Italian food. Let’s go to the lobby and see if they have any.

No such luck. We do, however, have some lobby cards to check out.

Let’s leave the lobby, go back inside the theatre and watch the trailer.

The last word goes to Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley intro and outro: