Film Forum

U.S., 1949
Directed by Fletcher Markle
Starring Franchot Tone, Jean Wallace, Myron McCormick
With guest stars Henry Fonda, Marlene Dietrich, Marsha Hunt, Everett Sloane
DCP (scanned from original nitrate print) courtesy of Bruce Lawton. Approx. 72 min.

“Jigsaw, (originally The Time Is Now), was shot in six weeks, from late April through to the beginning of June 1948. The Danzigers described it as “a topical suspense drama on a political theme,” but the story soon drifts away from the activities of The Crusaders, a generic hate group whose specific targets are never made clear. Instead, most of the film follows a one-man murder investigation undertaken by the assistant DA, played by Franchot Tone. Interesting suggestions of widespread corruption involving the mafia, right wing vigilantes, and political power brokers who operate out of Manhattan penthouses… Most of the cast consisted of unfamiliar New York faces, but Markle and Tone did convince quite a few of their friends to pop up in oddball cameos. John Garfield appears as a man in the street reading a newspaper. Burgess Meredith, who would soon direct Tone and Wallace in Man on the Eiffel Tower, is a bartender. Henry Fonda, Marsha Hunt, Marlene Dietrich, and Everett Sloane are also there, along with columnist Leonard Lyons and Fletcher Markel himself, who is Dietrich’s escort on a visit to the Blue Angel Nightclub.” – Richard Koszarski, “Keep ’em in the East”: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance.

Presented with support from the Robert Jolin Osborne Endowed Fund for American Classic Cinema.