T-Men

T-Men is a 1947 semidocumentary and police procedural style film noir about United States Treasury agents. The film was directed by Anthony Mann and shot by noted noir cameraman John Alton. The production features Dennis O'Keefe, Mary Meade, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, June Lockhart and Charles McGraw. A year later, director Mann used the film's male lead, Dennis O'Keefe, in Raw Deal. The film was endorsed by the U.S. Treasury Department: the opening credits are displayed over an image of the department's seal, then former Chief Coordinator of the department's six agencies Elmer Lincoln Irey delivers a monologue describing the objectives of those agencies and lauding their accomplishments. He describes the movie as a composite case from its files entitled "The Shanghai Paper Case". Plot In order to convict a counterfeiting ring, two United States Treasury agents are chosen to go undercover and infiltrate the Vantucci gang in Detroit. Dennis O'Brien and Anthony Genero are the agents, and they are to start at the bottom and work their way up the gang's hierarchy. To infiltrate the gang they must appear to be criminals from the Detroit milieu, so they study the history of Detroit crime in order to create reliable false identities. They declare themselves to be the last two members of the moribund River Gang, and that they are "on the lam". They become Vannie Harrigan (O'Brien) and Tony Galvani (Geraro), and convince Pasquale, the proprietor of a notorious hotel that they are real criminals.