The Captive City

Infobox Film | name =The Captive City


caption =
director = Robert Wise
producer = Theron Warth
writer = Alvin M. Josephy
Karl Kamb
starring =John Forsythe
Joan Camden
cinematography = Lee Garmes
music =
editing =
distributor = United Artists
released = March 26, 1952 U.S. release
runtime = 91 min
language = English
budget =
imdb_id = 0044476

"The Captive City" is a 1952 film, considered film noir, directed by Robert Wise. John Forsythe plays a crusading small city newspaper editor in this in this semidocumentary depiction of corruption and vice in paranoid post-World War II America. The film is one of several 1950s films to have story lines that capitalize on the Kefauver Committee's investigation of organized crime. Senator Estes Kefauver appears in the film as himself.

Plot

As newspaper editor Jim Austin prepares his testimony before the Committee, the story flashes back to the events which led to his testifying. Mob boss Murray Sirak, who has the entire police force of Austin's small town under his thumb. Sirak in turns takes his orders from an unseen "untouchable" Mister Big. Austin is driven to investigate corruption after Clyde Nelson, a local private detective, working on an apparently harmless divorce case, discovers the existence of a big-time gambling syndicate operating with the knowledge and consent of the city fathers, the local police, and the respectable elements of the community. Nelson is killed in a hit and run which appears to be an accident. However, Austin thinks otherwise when he's harassed by police when he looks into the PIs death.

Based on the experiences of Time magazine reporter Alvin Josephy, Jr., who co-wrote the films script.