Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952)

Cast: Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft, Donna Corcoran, Jeanne Cagney, Lurene Tuttle, Elisha Cook Jr., Jim Backus, Verna Felton, Willis Bouchey, Don Beddoe. Screenplay: Daniel Taradash, based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong. Cinematography: Lucien Ballard. Art direction: Richard Irvine, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: George A. Gittens. 

No Way Out (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

Linda Darnell, Sidney Poitier, and Richard Widmark in No Way Out

Cast: Sidney Poitier, Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, Stephen McNally, Mildred Joanne Smith, Harry Bellaver, Stanley Ridges, Dots Johnson, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Amanda Randolph, Maude Simmons. Screenplay: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Lesser Samuels. Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner. Art direction: George W. Davis, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Barbara McLean. Music: Alfred Newman.

Although its treatment of race relations in America seems naive today, No Way Out stands up as a solid drama about an issue that in the post-war years was finally receiving the attention from Hollywood filmmakers that it had too long deserved. It also launched the career of Sidney Poitier as well as, in smaller roles, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. The plot hinges on the novelty of a Black doctor, Luther Brooks (Poitier), serving as an intern in hospital in a large city. When two brothers, Ray (Richard Widmark) and Johnny Biddle (Dick Paxton) are admitted to the prison ward of the hospital after being shot by the police during a robbery, Brooks notices that Johnny's symptoms are not just that of a leg wound; suspecting some sort of mental impairment, Brooks does a spinal tap, during which Johnny dies. Ray Biddle has already demonstrated his racist animosity toward Brooks, and claims that he killed his brother. An autopsy would confirm Brooks's suspicion that Johnny's death was caused by an undiagnosed brain tumor, but Ray won't allow it, and he's backed up by his brother George (Harry Bellaver) and initially by Johnny's ex-wife, Edie (Linda Darnell). She once had an affair with Ray, but she loathes him and has done what she can to escape the poor-white neighborhood, Beaver Canal, where she grew up and the Biddles still live. Ray spurs the rabble-rousers of Beaver Canal to start a race riot, but they are met with resistance from the Black neighborhoods. The film is a little over-plotted: The crux of the plot, the autopsy, gets resolved in a way that isn't entirely convincing, and the confrontation of Brooks and Ray Biddle arrives in what's almost a coda, as an anti-climax. Widmark is allowed to overact in the role of Ray, and Poitier has yet to acquire the confident presence that made him a star. The best performance in the film comes from a deglamorized Darnell, who gives Edie a real toughness and vulnerability, suggesting that her inclination to do the right thing is at war with her experience growing up in Beaver Canal. The film's portrayal of raw racism still has the power to shock: We rarely hear white actors use the N-word today, even when their roles as bigots might seem to require it, and I flinched when a white woman spat in the face of Poitier's character. It's weaker in the treatment of racial violence: No one on either side seems to have any guns. 

 

Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)

Thelma Ritter and Richard Widmark in Pickup on South Street

Cast: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Murvyn Vye, Richard Kiley, Willis Bouchey, Milburn Stone. Screenplay: Samuel Fuller, based on a story by Dwight Taylor. Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald. Art direction: George Patrick, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Nick DeMaggio. Music: Leigh Harline.

What better thing can you say about Pickup on South Street than that J. Edgar Hoover hated it? Even though the bad guy in the film is a commie spy, he's really not much less a sleaze than the good guys: The film's protagonist is a pickpocket, after all, who sneers at patriotism and flag-waving. Samuel Fuller's peculiar mastery of the pulp genre was never more effective than in this film, which is distinguished by its performers: Richard Widmark as the pickpocket, teetering between vice and a grudging kind of virtue; Jean Peters as a bad girl with a good streak that only gets her beat up; and best of all, Thelma Ritter as the aging snitch who only wants enough money to have a good funeral. Ritter got an Oscar nomination out of the film, too. One of the darkest, and one of the best, film noirs.

Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)

It's fun sometimes to go back and read the reviews Bosley Crowther wrote for the New York Times, panning films that are now regarded as classics. Crowther, if you've forgotten, was the lead film critic for the Times for 27 years, until he panned Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) and persisted in attacking the film in follow-up articles until the Times nudged him into retirement. My generation grew up thinking of Crowther as the classic fuddy-duddy. Some of the harsh moralizing that marked his Bonnie and Clyde diatribe was present throughout his career, as in, for example, his comments in his review of Jules Dassin's Night and the City, which he called "a pointless, trashy yarn," a "a turgid pictorial grotesque," "a melange of maggoty episodes," and a "cruel, repulsive picture of human brutishness." It almost makes you want to run right out and see it, doesn't it? But there's a part of me that thinks the old foof was onto something: Night and the City is just a little too dark to be credible, and some elements of it -- such as Richard Widmark's over-the-top performance and the expressionistic camera angles of cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum (billed as Max Greene) -- verge on film noir self-parody. Still, there's a great energy in Night and the City, which often reminds me of Dickens's forays into the underworld -- the titular city is London -- especially when it comes to character names. The chief villain (Francis L. Sullivan, imitating Sydney Greenstreet) is a Mr. Nosseross -- his given name is Philip, not Rye -- and there's a minor character with the über-Dickensian name of Fergus Chilk. Widmark plays Harry Fabian, whose life is a continuous hustle, trying to gather enough money to finance his various get-rich-quick schemes. His long-suffering girlfriend, Mary Bristol (Gene Tierney, in a smaller role than her billing suggests), is a singer in a clip joint run by the Nosserosses -- Philip and his wife, Helen (Googie Withers). Eventually, Harry overreaches by trying to loosen the hold on the pro wrestling exhibition racket in London held by Kristo (Herbert Lom), whose star wrestler is known as the Strangler (Mike Mazurki). Harry cons an honest old Greek wrestler named Gregorius (Stanislaus Zbyszko) into staging a bout between Gregorius's protégé, Nikolas of Athens (Ken Richmond) and the Strangler, but everything goes to hell when Nosseross withdraws his promised financial support. There is a great wrestling scene in which Gregorius himself takes on the Strangler, who has broken Nikolas's wrist. Gregorius wins, but dies of a heart attack afterward, one of the many deaths the movie accumulates. The film makes great atmospheric use of its London setting, which was necessitated because Dassin was about to be blacklisted in Hollywood -- it's to the credit of 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck that he warned Dassin of this and, when Dassin decided he would seek work in Europe, allowed him to make the film in London.