Director Anthony Mann generates suspense from a story that logically shouldn’t have any—a New York cop trying to foil an assassination plot against president-elect Abraham Lincoln. Fred Zinnemann should have looked at this before he made The Day of the Jackal. Mann understands that mood is more important than plausibility in a thriller, and you could cut the mood here with a knife. With Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou, and Ruby Dee (1951).