Force of Evil (1948)

Film: Force of Evil (1948)

Stars: John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Howland Chamberlain, Roy Roberts

Director: Abraham Polonsky

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about noir in the late-1940's was how many of the writers & directors of the films were eventually blacklisted.  This makes sense in some fashion, because it's a genre that deals with a lot of metaphors, frequently including allusions to forms of government, and being very anti-nazi or anti-organized crime (i.e. very political), but it is a genre that tends to come up when you discuss almost any major director or writer that was blacklisted in this era.  One of the biggest and most prominent names to be blacklisted was Abraham Polonsky.  Polonsky, coming into 1948, was enjoying something of a career high.  He'd been nominated for an Academy Award for writing the box office success Body and Soul, and was given his first directing job at MGM, today's film Force of Evil.  The film was not a financial success, but it was Polonsky's refusal to name names in committee that meant the end of his career (he was described by Republican Rep. Harold Velde as a "dangerous man" for not cooperating with HUAC).  Polonsky didn't direct another movie until 1969's Tell Them Willie Boy is Here with Robert Redford & Katharine Ross, depriving us of two decades of his movies, given that Force of Evil lives up to its reputation as a classic of the film noir genre.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie feels almost intentionally confusing, but here's the basic plot.  We have two brothers: Joe Morse (Garfield), a lawyer who works for a mob boss named Tucker (Roberts), and Leo (Gomez), his older brother who took care of him after their parents died, but who also has ties to organized crime.  Joe wants to help his boss consolidate the numbers racket (think a very early version of the Powerball), but in doing so he'll have to absorb his brother into the crime syndicate, as Leo owns one of the numbers games.  The two men therefore come at odds, as the siblings have very different attitudes about their role in a corrupt system, and it's clear that (even by protecting each other) both of them won't get out of this alive.

Force of Evil is unique in the way that it not only approaches its subject (it's a deeply anti-capitalist film, one that talks about capitalism through the lens of the mob, and you can definitely see why this movie would've put Polonsky on the radar of HUAC), but also its dialogue.  There are a number of biblical allusions in the film, and the dialogue feels like we're watching a staged play in some parts, the actors (particularly Garfield & Gomez, both of whom had extensive backgrounds in theater before moving to Hollywood) able to get out great soliloquies as they start to meet their fate.  It also smartly has them both in shades of grey-neither of these men are all bad, but neither are all good either.  Gomez, for example, plays a character who downplays his connections to the organized crime of the city...but still clearly profits from it.

The film was a flop but was saved in the decades that followed by critics, and with good reason-it's very well-done.  The camerawork is incredible, giving us great medium shots (like the scene where Thomas Gomez is kidnapped) that have key action throughout the screen rather than just telling the story in a spoon-fed approach.  Garfield is good, but Gomez is better, owning every inch of this complicated character, and again, giving us the best kind of hubris when he's finally caught late in the film.  The film in many ways feels like predecessor to On the Waterfront (Martin Scorsese of all people made this allusion in an interview with Criterion many years ago), and that's probably the best enticement I can give you to see the film-it's basically a noir predecessor to On the Waterfront.

1940's: The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler