"A police officer with a history of unnecessary brutality, Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) inadvertently kills a robbery suspect while trying to get some information out of him. He camouflages the accidental slaying by making the whole incident appear a gangland murder. However, the circumstantial evidence leads to a cab driver whose daughter, Morgan (Gene Tierney) was involved with the murdered man. Through the course of the investigation, Morgan falls in love with Dixon. This unexpected relationship causes the entire situation to become extremely complicated.... "Written by Ben Hecht and directed by Otto Preminger, Where the Sidewalk Ends concerns itself with a hero of questionable virtue and limited potency trying to react to a society of confused moral values.... Hecht's film scripts in the late 1940s replaced such grotesque figures as Tony Camonte in Scarface... with such noir everymen as Mark Dixon in Where the Sidewalk Ends.... There is a common feeling of alienation and loneliness that molds these characters of Hecht's imagination. Not only do the heroes of Hecht's screenplays change drastically but the underworld he created has been transformed into a realistic backdrop ideal for the criminal acts and capers of dark personalities. It is a vision of the urban jungle far removed from the gallant settings of Underworld and Scarface. Where the Sidewalk Ends reunites many of the elements of Preminger's earlier noir film Laura. However, under Hecht's influence, the decadent world of the corrupted upper class explored in Laura has been replaced by a gritty, naturalistic milieu...." --Carl Macek, in "Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style"