Tuesday's Overlooked Films: Jigsaw (1949)

This 1949 crime drama isn't one of the better ones I've seen, unfortunately. Franchot Tone plays an ambitious Assistant D.A. tracking down a white supremacist group calling itself The Crusaders operating where I took to be New York City. Jean Wallace (married to Tone) plays a night club singer who has some of the answers he's looking for until she decides to leave town suddenly. Tone does a decent acting job. It is just the story moves so slowly even for a short movie. The cameo appearances of John Garfield, Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith, and other well-known Hollywood faces seem more of a gimmick than they add much entertainment value to the film. Perhaps they are the pieces of the "jigsaw." Marc Lawrence plays a pretty good oily thug ironically called Angel. I guess I was expecting more, and the movie just didn't deliver the goods. I'd only grade Jigsaw with a C+.