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Gunman in the Streets, originally released in France as Le Traque, is a lost movie that was well-worth finding. Shot in Paris at the end of the 1940s by Frank Tuttle, who had found his Hollywood career interrupted by the Red Scare, it possesses a lot of the same smooth, almost hypnotically subtle elements that characterized Tuttle's best film, This Gun for Hire. In the role of Eddie Roback, Dane Clark mostly acts with his eyes and his body, uttering precious few words over the course of the 88-minute movie. Simone Signoret carries a lot of the movie with her cool presence, which is startling in its mix of cheerful corruption and emotional detachment. The movie flows along with a beguiling ease, trailing out several plot threads and relationships that neatly draw together in a heightening dramatic arc, the suspense tableaus shifting elegantly from one scene to another, overlapping time and plot elements, and pulling the viewer inexorably into the center. Gunman in the Streets wasn't shown theatrically in the United States until 2001, 50 years after its premiere in France, and 49 years after it reached England. Despite its French origins, it has enough of an American feel in its pacing and approach to appeal to lovers of crime movies (it would make a great double-feature with White Heat, which it resembles to some extent), but its Gallic cast and Parisian settings, and its postwar ambience, make it alluring to foreign film buffs as well.