Samuel Fuller’s Belle Époque, etched lovingly in "blood and ink." Gutenberg and Benjamin Franklin are the presiding deities in 1880s New York, brass effigies wobbling on their pedestals while newshounds scuttle and collide in the streets below. (The high-angled camera travels over a cobblestone boulevard to enter the saloon, and then executes a pair of rapid lateral pans across the crowded counter just to blow out any remaining bits of period-piece dust.) The main newspaper’s pursuit of the almighty headline has cost innocent lives, the gruffly principled journalist (Gene Evans) accuses it of "contempt by publication" and sets out to found his own daily. The elderly writer (Herbert Hayes), the cartoonist who can sketch on beer foam (Neyle Morrow), the…

Samuel Fuller's valentine to his past life and love: the newspaper business.

Idealistic journalist Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans) dreams of a newspaper that sticks to honest reporting about people and events. Thanks to an admiring publisher and his commiserating newspaper friends, he is given the chance of a lifetime: editor of his own newspaper, "The Globe". What ensues is a newspaper war between he and the big paper on Park Row, "The Star".

Very early on, you get the idea that Gene Evans is playing Sam Fuller. This is Sam Fuller's "baby". Everything that Sam was about is captured with Phineas and played with the kid of S.O.B. punch that only someone like Evans can deliver. Fuller could not have…

This felt like Samuel Fuller was trying to do a Frank Capra film, and I utterly loved it. Every synopsis of the film goes out of its way to mention that Fuller was--shock--a newspaperman before he was a director, and I can't help but find it utterly charming that he chose to make a film about his former profession not just a glowing, human tribute to the power of the free press and the honor of those working it, but also to give it just a touch of American idealism (or more than just a touch). It almost feels like propaganda, but it seems to be propaganda for the human race overall somehow, some fundamental testament to our decency, deep…

"He was tried by your paper." "He was tried by jury." "You sprung the trap." "I simply broke the story." "Your story broke his neck!"

Fuller loves newspapers so much that he'd love them even if they weren't a necessary component of fully functional democracies, so much so that this inky drama's total avoidance of speaking truth to power comes off as sincere rather than cynical - to hear this movie tell it, the noblest thing a newspaper ever did was get a guy out of jail who was in jail because of the paper in the first place, and raise money to build the Statue of Liberty. That this comes off as romantic and exciting rather than a cop-out…

An interesting time capsule of a film, not because of the time the film takes place, but because of the importance of news papers today. Maybe that's why I've barely been into any film on the subject, even though I liked Spotlight enough.

Without knowing Sam Fullers history as a newspaper man, this reads like an interesting tale of almost any busy street with competing businesses. I was barely emotionally invested in any of it, especially in the parts where you can feel the reach. Only once scene, involving Gene Evans admonishing his pointless love interest after an off screen violent incident that she may or may not have caused. The love story in general felt like a selling point…