The Verdict (1946)

Directed by Don Siegel; produced by William Jacobs

Detective Superintendent Grodman (Sydney Greenstreet) returns to Scotland Yard after reluctantly attending the hanging of a man he had arrested for murder. He almost immediately learns that the prisoner was, in fact, innocent, as proven by new evidence. Goodman is sacked, and his hated rival, Buckley (George Coulouris), replaces him. But soon, Buckley is facing criticism over an unsolved homicide, and turns to Grodman for help.

What seems at first to be an intriguing and atmospheric mystery degenerates quickly - once one applies some thought to the components. The story could have devoted more consideration to the the case over which Grodman is fired. After all, as soon as he returns to his office after the hanging, he is confronted by the police commissioner (Holmes Herbert), who berates him over the circumstantial evidence that led to the execution - though surely the commissioner should have intervened before this, if he thought the case faulty. Grodman later - also without much proof - uncovers the original murder’s real perpetrator, though common sense should have led to the killer in the first place.

Further, Buckley’s character is more incompetent than any official detective Conan Doyle devised; Lestrade was at least a workman-like plodder. A good writer would have made such an unsympathetic character as Buckley a better policeman without abdicating his wrong-headedness. Such a stupid man might be found in broad farces, but has no place in more realistic mysteries. And the motive to the crimes in the film would have been almost clever if it hadn’t been polluted by several unnecessary red herrings.

The story was adapted from a novel by Israel Zangwill, an Englishman born in 1864, so he would have been familiar with Victorian Britain as a matter of course. Yet, there is something inauthentic about the setting (London, 1890) that suggests whatever innate atmosphere the original had was diluted by Peter Milne’s screenplay. The depiction of a music hall is entirely a 1940s night-club in earlier garb, and the notion that a police superintendent would live in the same street as a member of Parliament, and belong to the same club, is quite a stretch.

Interestingly, the costumer (Travilla, the man who put Marilyn Monroe in a potato sack) seemed to know more about the era and place than anyone else. The police sergeant Grodman speaks with outside Newgate Prison has the crested helmet of the City of London Police (distinct from the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard)), since the prison was in the City. Later, a constable is seen outside Scotland Yard, wearing an i.d. number beginning with ‘A’, the letter of the division that did indeed police the immediate vicinity of the famous headquarters. It’s too bad the film’s scriptwriter didn’t follow Travilla’s example in research.

It is always fun to see Greenstreet and Peter Lorre working in the same movie; I believe they were in nine pictures together. But they don’t have the verve created by a fine script to work from, and neither seems entirely thrilled with his work, though it in fact is good. Mediocre Greenstreet is more entertaining than most other actors’ best.

The Verdict is a movie that has promise in its opening, but quickly loses its potential in its execution. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the movie is that it is the first feature directed by Don Siegel, and quite different from the work for which he is famous.

Undertow (1949)

Directed by William Castle; produced by Ralph Dietrich

Tony Reagan (Scott Brady) was a small-time member of the Chicago Mob until he joined the army for seven years, much of it spent in combat. The experience turned him away from any thoughts of crime, and onto a ‘little piece of Heaven’: a hotel in the Nevada mountains. Coming back to Chicago to whisk his girlfriend (Dorothy Hart) off to join him, however, proves to be a mistake: his former boss is killed and Reagan’s framed for the deed. Now, both the cops and the gangsters are after him - and he’s after the real killer.

Before he became infamous for low-budget ‘horror’ films, William Castle was directing enjoyable B-movie winners like Undertow. This is the third film of his in this genre I have seen, and the third I’ve liked. Castle makes good use of location, starting with Reno (I’m always surprised when gambling or resort cities have districts that look ‘normal’, like New York or Los Angeles) and ending with Chicago. There are some tense moments that are effective.

Brady, somewhat resembling a later generation’s Ray Liotta, is a sympathetic hero, giving his character a suitably light-hearted optimism at the beginning, and a confusion just as fitting later on. The other actors are largely unknown but, as can be the case with the many forgotten small-timers, give good performances.

Peggy Dow plays the perhaps obligatory woman to whom the hunted protagonist turns for help. Interestingly, she was in nine films in three years, then retired upon marrying an Oklahoma oil tycoon, and devoted much of her life thereafter to philanthropy. The only other familiar name is Rock Hudson’s, though here it’s spelled ‘Roc’ (like the mythical bird; he was wise to change it). He has a bit part, though it’s his first credited role.

What is particularly attractive is the story and the script. It’s rare that clever detective work comes into play in lower-grade film noir, but the sharp wits of Reagan’s childhood pal turned cop (Bruce Bennett) are impressive. This leads to an exciting conclusion with a satisfying climax. As well, it’s good to see that the effects of a beating and a bullet wound cannot be shrugged off by every hero in an old movie.

Undertow is not excellent by any means but is nonetheless a fine little film noir with good pacing, direction, acting and writing. (Even so, a rewarding field of study by film-buffs might be the number of crime movies or thrillers that have titles with nothing to do with the story. The closest this one comes to any kind of under-tow is showing Lake Michigan.)

WarGames (1983)

Directed by John Badham; produced by Harold Schneider

High school slacker David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) lives for computers. He’s recently discovered the pleasures of hacking into others’ systems. Along with his new friend Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy), he attempts to cut into the computer of a game company, in order to play their new game ahead of its public release. While group-dialling a large collection of telephone numbers through his modem, in order to find the company’s number, he accidentally connects with an unidentified computer that offers a selection of games. He chooses the exciting-sounding Global Thermonuclear War. What David doesn’t realise is that he has hacked into NORAD’s master computer. What no one realises is that the computer doesn’t know the difference between games and reality.

An exciting and fun thriller from the early days of personal computers, WarGames holds up very well as a movie, despite depending on technology that rapidly became dated. The story has a good anti-war message and, though one of its central characters is a computer, it is not really about technology and its take-over of decisions that should come from humans. This isn’t The Forbin Project. Rather, the computer, WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), is a stand-in for a completely unemotional entity who looks at war objectively and remorselessly. This makes both the tension and the conclusion more forceful.

The story is better than the script. The characters the latter creates are not deep, though the two leads are given greater scope than the adults. The latter are fairly stock, especially David’s parents, who are the dummies that parents seemed to have been reduced to in movies aimed at adolescents in the 1980s. As well, the conflict between McKittrick (Dabney Coleman), who believes electronics can replace people in decision-making, and Beringer (Barry Corbin), the general who is dubious of computers, gives an acceptable but black-and-white debate, though, except for some language, it is no different than what one might find in young adult fiction.

More thought is put into the character of Stephen Falken (John Wood), the inventor of WOPR, though his decision to help David and Jennifer, after first expressing acquiescence in a possible nuclear war, is sudden, and its cause can only be surmised.

David’s escape from custody in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex looks to be rather too easy, beginning with breaking out of a locked room á la McGyver, then slipping out of the base all together. This too is on the level of a story aimed at fun-loving young adults.

These criticisms might suggest that there is more wrong with WarGames than there is that’s right; this would be erroneous. The direction is very good and keeps the pace going. The climax is invigorating and satisfying, and the lesson given is both fitting and sensible.

The acting makes up for a lot. Broderick and Sheedy are convincing as teenagers basically wanting a good time but rather scared of the consequences of their actions once they see what has occurred. It’s not always easy to show people on the watershed between two phases of their lives, but the performers do well. Coleman is the sort of impatient, snide character he claimed as his own in the ‘80s and Corbin started working on his stock character about this time, too. Also appearing in small roles are John Spencer, Michael Madsen, James Tolkan, Maury Chaykin and an uncredited William H Macy.

Though the story of WarGames is slight, the execution and the resolution are successful, and contribute to making the film a thriller aimed at younger people, but enjoyable for their elders as well.

(For those who like trivia, it may be noted that the characters Falken and Beringer were inspired by (rather than based on) the physicist Stephen Hawking and General James Hartinger, respectively. At one time NORAD used a computer for war-game strategies; its acronym was BRGR. WarGames’s computer was called WOPR, which, after all, is a brand of BRGR.)

The Wages of Fear (a.k.a. Le Salaire de la Peur (1953))

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot; produced by R Borderie and H G Clouzot

In an isolated South American village dominated by an American oil company, four men are seeking ways out. Mario (Yves Montand) is a French ex-patriate, dreaming of Paris; Jo (Charles Vanel) is a big talker with big plans; Bimba (Peter Van Eyck) ekes out a living as a driver; Luigi (Folco Lulli) is a dying man who wants to go home to Calabria. For a small fortune each, they are hired by the oil company to transport nitro-glycerine in trucks over crumbling mountain roads, decrepit bridges and treacherous mires, a route of which every mile could be their last.

The Wages of Fear is a fine cinematic work on a number of levels. The most obvious is that it is an exciting, often tense, drama. It can’t really be called an action movie, since much of the suspense comes from inaction, or at least, slow action. It’s also a drama of characters, showing their personalities despite giving very little information about them. Lastly, and fittingly most vaguely, it is a cynical essay on life.

The direction is first-rate, though that is not immediately apparent. The beginning is slow, as it depicts the characters and their desperate situations. But the viewer sees story-telling in the direction. For instance, in a scene in which Mario and Jo are discussing conditions in the village, they walk and talk through searing heat, downpours, dust-storms, all illustrating what they must put up with, while narrating their predicament with words.

But when the journey to the wells begins, Clouzot’s talent becomes more evident, because he has to show that the men are constantly in danger, yet cannot stress it all the time. Indeed, such is the journey that there are numerous hazards aside from the obvious, and these are handled so well that one forgets that there is still the nitroglycerine to worry about.

The script makes clear that none of the four men is safe; when Bimba hits on a plan to use the explosives to blow away a huge boulder blocking the road, the audience has no idea whether it will succeed or, if it does, if someone will be killed anyway. In this, the writing takes a fatalistic approach: a man’s skill can help him only so far. Luck plays a bigger part, and random chance the biggest. Some events occur the causes of which are never known. This isn’t contrivance; it’s the way life is sometimes.

The film does have weaknesses. The needless sub-plot, if it can be termed that, featuring Mario’s apathetic relationship with his girlfriend, Linda (Véra Clouzot), is a distraction more than anything else, and was likely included to give a rôle to the director’s wife. (His brother also contributed, more productively, by co-writing the script under the pseudonym Jérôme Géronimi.) The denouement is more ironic than realistic.

The faults in The Wages of Fear are few, and are amply overwhelmed by the merits of the movie. A film filled with slow, creeping tension, rather than overt scares, The Wages of Fear is rightly considered a superb thriller.