Johnny O'Clock (1947)

Directed by Robert Rossen; produced by Edward G Nealis

Johnny O’Clock (Dick Powell) is used to trouble. He’s the junior partner of a criminally-minded casino-owner (S Thomas Gomez) who may be phasing him out in favour of a crooked cop (Jim Bannon). That unpleasant character is under the scrutiny of a dogged police inspector (Lee J Cobb) who wants information on his quarry from Johnny, who is trying to help the girl (Nina Foch) in love with the dirty cop. Johnny also has to fend off the advances of his partner’s wife (Ellen Drew) while becoming interested in a new arrival in town (Evelyn Keyes). Yeah, Johnny is used to trouble – but maybe not this much…

If the story sounds complicated, it is – but not artificially so, just for the sake of seeming busy. The relationships of the various characters, especially those involved in the casino and its dealings, take a while to figure out. That’s just the smart script not treating the viewer as an idiot; it lets him unravel the skein as the movie goes. The plot is actually pretty simple, but is made convoluted by the characters trying to keep their motives and actions secret.

Those characters are realistic and interesting. Johnny runs a casino but doesn’t gamble. This is a motto for life, not just for play: he never makes a move without knowing all he can about a situation; he doesn’t take chances. This has allowed him to survive twenty years in business with his partner, and has given a decent guy armour that doesn’t tolerate foolishness; nor does it give its wearer a break. The other personalities in the movie are likewise guarded. Few seem to have travelled an easy road in life.

This is reflected in the dialogue. I noticed that the lines spoken were often indefinite, hedged about with uncertain meaning, or give information enough only to satisfy immediate curiosity. Instead of answering with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ the simple question, “Are you hungry?”, the reply is, “I could eat.” This may have been no more than an affectation of the writer. If it is, it works; the idiom creates the impression that trust is so limited that it is dispensed with an eye-dropper. When someone says what he means, it is usually in an outburst of anger or fear.

The acting is very good. Powell had been known for musicals and comedies until the mid-1940s, having started professionally as a crooner. His baby-face lent itself very well to roles of light-weight romance and breezy adventure. Then, in a sharp contrast, he starred as private investigator Philip Marlowe, in Murder, My Sweet (1944). The gamble – and a gamble it must have been for many connected with the film – paid off. Powell’s performance was applauded, the movie was a hit, and thereafter the actor successfully alternated among crime or action stories, romances and comedies.

Here, Powell has no difficulty convincing the viewer that he has been riding the edge of felony for decades. O’Clock is smooth and capable; it’s entertaining to watch him adapt – if he can – to every twist of the plot. The other players are up to his standard. Gomez here does more with a glance than he did with an entire movie of histrionics in Force of Evil (reviewed in the immediately previous entry of this blog).

Drew shows she is trouble from her first scene, a woman who thinks she can get away with anything; Keyes is suitably strong but confused at being suddenly smitten with O’Clock; Cobb, once more playing a policeman, is the one character with nothing to lose; he is more relaxed than any other, but nobody thinks he isn’t up to his job.

Jeff Chandler has a small role as a poker-player, while Phil Brown’s part as an hotel desk-clerk is slightly bigger.

The direction is probably the most mundane element of the film, but is still good, doing what it should. Rossen doesn’t hurry the story needlessly, nor does he give anything away. How the movie will end is up in the air until the finale.

A solid film noir, with all the requisite parts, Johnny O’Clock should satisfy most movie-watchers.

Force of Evil (1948)

Directed by Abraham Polonsky; produced by Bob Roberts

Lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) has big plans for the coming week: he and his client (Roy Roberts), an important man in the numbers racket, have fixed the coming draw, in order to break a swarm of small operations and then move in and take them over. In the meantime, they hope to persuade the government to legalise the numbers game and turn it into a lottery, which Morse and his boss would already run. But Morse comes up against three obstacles: his brother (Thomas Gomez), who runs one of the little operations, a new girlfriend (Beatrice Pearson), and a reforming commission, intent on crushing the numbers racket. It’s going to be a tough week for Joe Morse.

I was disappointed in Force of Evil. It is a classic of American cinema, especially in the crime genre. Certainly, it has its advantages, foremost being the leading man. Garfield is excellent, his understated acting perfect for a character who hopes things will go smoothly but knows he is on the edge of an abyss every moment of his life. His bravado is clearly too cool, his confidence too superficial; he waits for the click on the telephone line signifying a wire-tap, balances strategies like a juggler. All the time, there is an innocence to his character suggesting that, despite his experience and knowledge, he can’t understand why people don’t do as he does, think as he does.

The problems with the film, however, are multiple. The female lead, though adequate, seems to have been chosen more for her dewy-eyed expressions of incredulity than for her acting abilities, and I never found Garfield’s attraction to her credible. It might have been due to a mere desire for romantic conquest, but if so, Garfield’s choice comes across as entirely random.

Indeed, this issue highlights a larger problem: that the actors are let down more by the script than by their skills. Gomez’s anxiety borders on hysteria much of the time, no doubt intending to reflect his constant imminent heart attack; Howland Chamberlain plays a small-time accountant whose betrayal seems thinly motivated at first, then non-existent. Marie Windsor puts in an appearance as Roberts’s wife and has two scenes, neither of them necessary; her considerable talent is wasted here. As well, the supporting players are in a melodrama, while Garfield retains control in a purely dramatic manner.

Even his character undergoes a transformation which the script thinks is deeper than does the viewer. We see him with no sympathy at all for the millions of people who play the numbers. He thinks only of himself and his brother, with the later, unaccountable, addition of his girlfriend. By the film’s end, though, we are asked to believe in his metamorphosis into an almost heroic figure. Many works of fiction achieve this. Force of Evil does not.

While the script abets the overwrought performances, the story appears to have been pared down from something that made more sense. The numbers racket is well-explained, as is the intended take-over by Garfield and Roberts of the small ‘banks’ - the people who take in gamblers’ money. After that, there comes the desire of a rival (Paul Fix) to meet with Gomez, presumably to do a deal; there is a kidnapping, which seems pointless; another meeting between Roberts and Fix, which should have negated the earlier meeting… It’s possible that I missed something; if so, I must have missed a lot.

There is one aspect that, while it could not have saved Force of Evil, could be used for an interesting premise of its own. Looming over all the villains is the shadow of the unseen crime-fighter, Hall, who wants to smash the rackets and clean up the city. Unlike many similar stories, this movie’s villains treat Hall with respect, almost reverentially, an avenging angel against whom they have little recourse; thus, the rush to legalise their felonies. It made me think a version of the Sherlock Holmes stories, from the point of view of the Moriarty gang, with the omnipresent and frightening detective in the background, might prove entertaining.

Unfortunately, Force of Evil is neither as imaginative nor as gripping as it might have been. No one in it really deserves salvation, and the tragedies that befall the main characters seem, if more than they should have suffered, not out of keeping with their actions. Sometimes a classic film leaves me wondering what the fuss is about. I wonder that about Force of Evil.

The Monolith Monsters (1957)

Directed by John Sherwood; produced by Howard Christie

A meteorite crashes into the deserts of southern California, shattering into hundreds of pieces. What are seen by a geologist (Phil Harvey) and a little girl (Linda Scheley) as curiosities begin to grow when in contact with water, and soon, life and property are menaced by toppling towers of stone. It’s up to another scientist (Grant Williams) and his fellow townspeople to stop what seems to be unstoppable.

The late 1940s and the ‘50s were the golden age of science fiction cinema, when the genre made the leap from books to film. Like its printed counterpart, the science fiction movie was often cheap, poorly made and, literally, ridiculous. Bad science fiction tends to overshadow much that was good; indeed, the latter is often lumped with the former simply because it might be low-budget and from the 1950s. But The Monolith Monsters is an example of quality overcoming limitations.

The Monolith Monsters certainly isn’t very good – it doesn’t approach The Thing from Another World (reviewed on this blog in 2017) – but it is good, nonetheless. The premise is original: there is no alien race intent on conquest, no sentient life with which to reason, no advanced technology. There is instead a very puzzling scientific problem: how to stop something that, when it combines with a plentiful and, indeed, indispensible element of human existence, becomes relentless. The solution is, in fact, arbitrary, in which case the problem then cleverly switches to its application. The science, as in most such films, would be dubious in the real world, but within the context of the story remains legitimate.

The script is intelligence enough not to be insulting to the viewer. The characters use their brains sufficiently and their egos not much at all. The Monolith Monsters is gratifyingly free of the stupid characters that populate too many movies and who are included, apparently, just to add contrived crises. There are a few holes in the script, though they are more like ‘slips’: for instance, touching the extraterrestrial rock evidently results in an organism’s petrifaction, even though several characters touch the objects without harm. Judging by events, I assumed that touching the wet rock led to the fatal result, though this point is not made in the film.

While The Monolith Monsters uses a number of genre clichés, such as the isolated community in danger, it mitigates some. For example, though the town in question (population 1,500) is set apart, its residents are quick to utilise the greater resources found farther away.

Another amateur reviewer mentioned that the townspeople in the film are too compliant; I presume he referred to the lack of resistance to evacuating the community, and to the coöperation among the characters. The latter aspect caused me no disturbance. Sometimes people do work well together. As for residents willingly fleeing their town in the face of disaster, one must recall that this movie was made in 1957: moving quickly and without question when told was practiced in the shadow of the mushroom cloud.

The acting is competent. Williams is best known for being the title character in The Incredible Shrinking Man, also released in 1957, and another science fiction film with no villain. He does well as someone who could be the handsome leading man but nonetheless must be the ordinary person caught in extraordinary circumstances. The female lead (Lola Albright) is unremarkable, but the other supporting players are natural and effective. William Schallert appears uncredited as a weatherman who doesn’t do well in emergencies, and Troy Donahue, a couple of years away from his time as a heart-throb, has a bit part as a demolitions-man.

Something I didn’t expect was the quality of the direction. There is a strong element of tension, especially in the first twenty minutes or so, and this is helped by use of foreshadowing, such as the sight of a dam or the sound of thunder. When the audience knows the secret for which the protagonists are searching, and the director uses this knowledge well, suspense can be created. It helps when the protagonists aren’t missing the clues through mental density.

Though The Monolith Monsters is not even among the best science fiction films of its decade, it is nonetheless an entertaining movie which does what every successful picture does: it uses what it has to the greatest advantage.

Boomerang! (1947)

Directed by Elia Kazan; produced by Louis de Rochemont

In a small city in Connecticut, a much-respected parish priest (Wyrley Birch) is inexplicably shot to death on Main Street. Despite numerous witnesses - and intense public pressure - it takes time for the police to find their man (Arthur Kennedy). But then the prosecutor (Dana Andrews) is left with a bigger problem: he thinks the suspect may be innocent.

Based on real events and real people, Boomerang! is not really a mystery - the solution to the murder is implied from the beginning - but is nevertheless an involving and well-crafted story. The theme might very well be that what is seen is often not what is. This theme begins with the killing, continues with the witnesses and then spreads out to encompass almost all the characters.

The crime, the investigation and the subsequent trial are only a part of the movie; just as interesting are the political machinations which push and pull the characters, and which reveal much about them. The city in which the story takes place is under a ‘reform’ administration, which cleared away much of the corruption of the old regime. Yet its members have their own agendas, some selfless, some not. Meanwhile, the former bosses are hoping to make a comeback over the ruin of the trial.

Andrews does very well as the upright prosecutor, who is not immune to the prospects of a reward, if he wins the case and convicts the murderer. While he is trying to remain dutiful, he is beset by doubts about his case: he has the evidence, he just doesn’t feel right about it. Interestingly, Lee J Cobb’s police chief thinks ‘something doesn’t feel right’ about the case against the suspect, yet he does the opposite of Andrews and submerges his instinct in the facts.

Ed Begley plays a character he has portrayed in various ways in different movies, someone whose surface image is painted on a brittle shell, and whose emotions are ready to demolish everything. Equally ambivalent is one (Sam Levene) of the many reporters on the story: he knows well how despicable his publisher is, yet does what is required of him - even while he may be able to get in a jab or two for truth, after all. And then there is the nervous intensity of Kennedy as the prisoner, worn out one moment, bouncing back with fury the next. These are all full-bodies characters, well-written. (Karl Malden has a tertiary role but is uncredited. Also uncredited is playwright Arthur Miller, as a suspect in police line-up; perhaps he came to the film through his connection with Cobb, soon to be in the Broadway production of Death of a Salesman.)

The script aside from its depictions of people is very good. It effectively conveys mob mentality and the frustration of those who have to deal with it. It doesn’t make the public out to be villainous; it becomes just another force that buffets the principal players this way and that.

The direction is up to the level of the script and the actors, though not as noticeable. It is to its credit, though, that, while the opening narration states that the movie is based on true events, what will eventually happen is in some doubt.

More of a suspense film than a crime movie, with more drama than mystery, Boomerang! is a well-handled, well-made story of the conflict and tension a crime can create in a community.