For a recent series at London's National Film Theater, James Ellroy confessed the influence of film noir on his own darker-than-dark fictive palette. Set in Los Angeles, T-Men is a stunning example of director Anthony Mann's collaborations with famed cinematographer John Alton that imbued the pseudo-documentary crime-stopper saga (in this case, Treasury agents hunting down a counterfeiting ring) with elements of ambiguity and thrilling artistry. L.A.'s pitch-black sidewalks become the primordial base out of which the human shape evolves, eyes shining out of the blackness as our heroes descend into the world of "this cagey gang (who) use our own methods-surveillance, shadowing?" The suggestion that the cops and crooks are two sides of the same tarnished coin is very much in the Ellroy vein. The dialogue sputters with the crisp cynicism that was borrowed and then parodied in later films. And the action is punctuated by moments of bizarrely staged violence-Wallace Ford meeting his Maker in the dreamlke fog of a steambath is a sequence unmatched in film noir. Alton's light sources are scattershot, threatening. He makes "a thousand points of light" look paltry-but T-Men's world is neither kind nor gentle. (JB/SS)