“I tried to do a Hitchcock,” Anthony Mann said of The Tall Target, “an exercise in high voltage: the maximum suspense and tension, in action that was very concentrated in time and space.” The voltage is high, the wattage low: set mostly on a train carrying Abraham Lincoln to Washington for his inauguration in 1861, this fascinating thriller makes superb use of deep noir cinematography to establish its mood of danger lurking beneath plush period surfaces. Made on a minuscule budget, the film is nonetheless rich with historical detail. The seemingly implausible but at least partially factual storyline has Dick Powell as an ex-cop and former Lincoln bodyguard trying to foil an assassination plot against the president-elect. For an added frisson of anachronistic paranoia, the detective's name is John Kennedy.