An Offer You Can’t Refuse #8: Force of Evil (dir by Abraham Polonsky)

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1948 film noir, Force of Evil, plays out like a fever dream of dark and disturbing things.

The film begins on the third of July with attorney Joe Morse (John Garfield) telling us that, by the end of the 4th of July, he will have made his first million dollars, something that he describes as being “an important moment in every man’s life.” Joe has an appreciation of money that one can only get from growing up poor. By his own admission, Joe spent most of his youth on the streets, committing petty crimes. It was his older brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez), who held things together back home and who kept Joe from getting into any truly serious trouble. Now, years later, Joe is an attorney and Leo is a small-time player in New York’s numbers racket.

(The numbers racket, as the film explains, is an illegal lottery in which people — mostly in working class neighborhoods — bet on which three numbers will be drawn at the end of the day. In this film, those three numbers are the last three digits of “the handle”, the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in the major newspapers in New York.)

Joe now works for Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts). Tucker may look like a respectable businessman and he may operate out of an office building but he’s actually a gangster. He got his start as a bootlegger and then, after prohibition ended, he moved into the number game. He and Joe have come up with a scheme to consolidate and take over the entire New York numbers racket. They’re going to fix the handle so that, on July 4th, everyone who picks “776” as their three numbers will win. (As Joe explains, a mix of patriotism and superstition leads to thousands of people picking 776 on every Independence Day.) When the small time operators don’t have the money to pay off the winners, Tucker will loan them the money to stay afloat. However, by accepting the loan, the operators will now be in debt to Tucker and Tucker will basically control their operations. Anyone who doesn’t want to work for Tucker will either be out of work or dead. It’s all strictly business.

The only problem is that Joe knows that the plan will basically bankrupt Leo. When Joe goes to Leo and tries to warn him, Leo refuses to listen to him. Leo may be a criminal but he’s an honest criminal and he has no interest in getting involved with someone like Ben Tucker. Leo watches out for the people working underneath him and treat them fairly, a concept that men like Ben Tucker will never understand. In fact, the only thing that Leo asks from Joe is that Joe make sure that Leo’s longtime secretary, Doris Lowry (Beatrice Pearson), is taken care of.

Needless to say, things get even more complicated from there….

Force of Evil presents us with a world where everyone — with exception of maybe Doris — is corrupt and where everything — from blackmail to murder — is strictly business. Greed is the motivator for every action and the more money that comes in, the easier it is to justify every ruthless act. Joe makes his fortune over the course of one of America’s most sacred holidays but it comes at the expense of his brother. His brother tries to do the right thing as far as his employee are concerned, just to discover that the Walter Tuckers of the world don’t care what happens to the people who work for them as long as the money keeps coming in. It’s a dark and cynical movie, a gangster movie were the cops are just as dangerous as the people they’re arresting and where concepts like love and loyalty mean nothing when there’s money to be made.

As directed by Abraham Polonsky, Force of Evil plays out like a filmed nightmare. Every interior seems to be full of ominous shadows and the exterior scenes always seem to find characters like Leo Morse and his timid accountant (Howland Chamberlain) dwarfed by the city around them. Gangsters like Ben Tucker and his associates emerge from the darkness, with the film’s final shoot-out taking place in complete darkness and featuring characters shooting at shadows despite not knowing who that shadow might belong to. It’s a dark and claustrophobic world that Polonsky presents, one that always seems to be closing in on the Morse brothers and the people unlucky enough to be around them. (The real world would later close in on Polonsky, an unapologetic Marxist whose ideology is obvious in the film’s portrait of crime just being another form of big business. Polonsky was among those blacklisted in the 50s. Force of Evil was the first of only three movies that he would ever direct.)

John Garfield plays Joe Morse with a barely contained anger. Even after he’s made his first million, he’s still angry at the world. Getting rich is his revenge on a society that predicted that someone like him would never amount to anything. Roy Roberts is perfectly sleazy as the outwardly respectable Walter Tucker and Marie Windsor has a few wonderful scenes as his vampish wife. Perhaps the film’s best performance comes from Howland Chamberlain, playing an accountant who soon finds himself in over his head as Tucker makes his move on Leo’s operation.

Tough, violent, and visually unforgettable, Force of Evil is an excellent gangster film and a classic noir. It’s definitely an offer that you can’t refuse.

John Garfield in Force of Evil

Previous Offers You Can’t (or Can) Refuse:

30 Days of Noir #26: Behind Green Lights (dir by Otto Brower)

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1946 film, Behind Green Lights, takes over the course of one night at one police station.

When tough-but-fair Police Lt. Sam Carson (William Gargan) shows up for work, he discovers that a car has been haphazardly parked in front of the station. Inside the car is bullet-ridden body of Walter Bard, a somewhat notorious private investigator. If the brazenness of the crime wasn’t already enough to indicate that there’s more going on here than just a detective following the wrong lead, it is soon discovered that Bard was acquainted with Janet Bradley (Carole Landis), the daughter of a reform-minded mayoral candidate. As Janet explains it to Lt. Carson, Bard was blackmailing a friend of hers. Janet admits that she had a gun with her the last time that she saw Bard but she swears that she didn’t murder him.

Corrupt newspaper publisher Max Calvert (Roy Roberts) views Janet’s father as being a potential rival and he immediately starts to pressure Lt. Carson to make an arrest in the case. Not convinced of Janet’s guilt, Carson refuses. Meanwhile, the crooked coroner (Don Beddoe) comes across evidence that could change the entire case but, as a favor to Calvert, tries to cover it up….

But that’s not all. It’s a very busy night at the precinct. Not only does Carson have to deal with the murder and all of the political fallout, he also has to deal with an escapes prisoner and a collection of snarky crime reports who spend all of their hanging out at the station house and waiting for a big story to drop.

Largely set in one location and featuring a cast made up of fast-talking, quick-witted cynics, Behind Green Lights sometimes feel more like a play than a film. (One could easily imagine it taking place in the same cinematic universe as The Front Page. Call it the MacArthur/Hecht Cinematic Universe, or MHCU for short.) Though the film only has a running time of 64 minutes, it manages to pack a lot of twists and turns into that hour. For the most part, it all works. The mystery is intriguing, the cast is made up of properly tough character actors, and the tragic Carole Landis is well-cast as a character who could be an innocent victim or a dangerous femme fatale. The film and her performance will keep you guessing. (It has been written that Landis, a talented actress who never quite got the roles that roles that she deserved, was heart-broken when Rex Harrison refused to divorce his wife and marry her. Two years after the release of Behind Green Lights, she was found dead at the age of 29. The official ruling was suicide, though members of Landis’s family dispute that.)

Behind Green Lights may be a minor noir but it’s still an entertaining one. And it can be viewed for free on YouTube! Just remember, when doing an online search, that the film is called Behind Green Lights and not Behind the Green Door. Don’t make the same mistake that I did!

30 Days of Noir #20: He Walked By Night (dir by Alfred L. Werker and Anthony Mann)

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1948 film noir, He Walked By Night, opens with a policeman named Rawlins on his way home from work. As he drives down the street, he sees a man walking alone at night. Because there’s been a number of recent burglaries in the area and the man’s a stranger, Rawlins decides to pull over and ask the man for his ID.

What Rawlins doesn’t realize is that the man is Roy Morgan (Richard Basehart) and yes, Roy is indeed the burglar. Roy is something of a mystery man. (Needless to say, Morgan is not his real last name.) In the pre-Internet age, he has very carefully and very meticulously avoided leaving any sort of paper trail. He lives, by himself, in a small apartment, his only companion being an adorable dog and the police scanner that Roy uses to always stay a few steps ahead of the cops. When Rawlins pulls him over, it’s the closest that Roy has ever come to being caught. Roy get out of the situation by shooting the cop and then running into the night.

The rest of the film deals with the efforts of two police detectives (played by Scott Brady and James Cardwell) and their captain (Roy Roberts) to discover who shot Rawlins and bring him to justice. It’s not easy because not only has Roy done a good job of obscuring his very existence but his police scanner always gives him advanced warning whenever they cops start to close in on him. The only lead that the cops have is a salesman named Paul Reeves (Whit Bissell). Reeves has been buying and reselling the electronic equipment that Roy’s been stealing from houses all over Hollywood. When Reeves tells the cops that he had no idea the stuff was stolen, the cops all share a weary roll of the eye. No matter whether Reeves is telling the truth or not, he’s now the key to tracking down a cop killer….

He Walked By Night is a police procedural and, while the plot may sound familiar, the film is elevated by the atmospheric direction of Alfred Werker and an uncredited Anthony Mann. As visualized by Werker and Mann, the streets of Los Angeles have never been darker and more menacing. Roy emerges from the fog to commit his crimes and then disappears back into the mist, like some sort of paranormal spirit. The film reaches its high point when the police chase their quarry through the sewers of Los Angeles, a scene that will remind many of the famous finale of The Third Man.

Though the film offers up clues to Roy Morgan’s motivation, he remains an enigma for much of the film. Richard Basehart plays him as a paranoid man who only seems to be confident and happy when he’s stealing or when he’s outsmarting the police. In many ways, regardless of whether he escapes the police or not, Roy’s destined to spend his life trapped in a prison of his own design. Even hiding out on the fringes of society, Roy knows that his time is limited. There’s only so many times one person can escape their fate. Until he’s either captured or killed, Roy is destined to always walk the night, alone.

Shattered Politics #12: The Boss (dir by Byron Haskin)

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After you’ve watched The Phenix City Story, why not go over to Netflix and watch another obscure but hard-hitting B-movie, The Boss?

First released in 1956, The Boss came out a year after The Phenix City Story but they both serve as good companion pieces to each other. Whereas The Phenix City Story shows what it’s like to live in a city dominated by corruption and crime, The Boss shows how a city could get that way in the first place.

The Boss opens in 1919, in an unanmed midwestern city. (A title card informs us that the city is a “middle class city.”) World War I has ended and the returning soldiers are marching in a parade throughout the city. Leading the march is Capt. Matt Brady (John Payne), a humorless war hero. Marching behind him are a group of soldiers who all seem to hate his guts, even after Bob Herrick (William Bishop) attempts to defend him. It appears that Matt was a strict officer during the war and Bob was the only one of his men who didn’t hate him. Of course, a lot of that is because Bob was a childhood friend of Matt’s. They both grew up in the city together. To be exact, their home was in the third ward. As Bob explains, the Brady family rules the third ward.

Matt’s older brother, Tim (Roy Roberts), is the 3rd ward’s alderman. After the parade ends, Tim explains that he expects Matt to follow in the family business. However, Matt doesn’t want anything to do with politics. Instead, he just wants to marry Elsie (Doe Avedon) and live a normal life. In fact, Matt says, he’s got a date with Elsie that night.

However, before Matt can go on that date, he ends up getting attacked and beaten up by some of the soldiers from the parade. He’s late for his date and when Elsie refuses to forgive him, Matt ends up going out and getting drunk. After getting into a few more fights, he meets an insecure woman named Lorry (Gloria McGhee) and announces that they’re getting married whether she wants to or not.

The next morning, Matt wakes up to discover that he now has a wife, Elsie never wants to see him again, and that Tim has dropped dead of a heart attack. Bruised and hungover, Matt suddenly finds himself forced to take over the family business.

The film jumps forward a few years. Matt is now the most powerful man in the city. He decides who get elected to which office and, with the help of the Mafia, he’s made a lot of money for himself. Bob, meanwhile, has married Elsie and is now Matt’s attorney and unofficial second-in-command. Meanwhile, Lorry lives in a huge mansion that she never leaves.

It took me a while to get into The Boss. In fact, I nearly stopped watching after the first twenty minutes because it didn’t ever seem like there would be a moment when Matt would be anything other than surly, drunk, and bruised. But then, once Tim drops dead, the movie becomes a bit more interesting. If you remember John Payne for anything, it’s probably for being the nice but kind of boring lawyer from the original Miracle on 34th Street. So, it’s interesting to see him here, playing a crude and perpetually angry man who always seems to be on the verge of punching someone out. He gives a good performance and occasionally you even feel a little sorry for Matt. For everything he does wrong, he’s still essentially the same guy who wanted to marry a school teacher and live out in the suburbs.

Of course, I’m a history nerd so my favorite scenes in The Boss were the ones that dealt with real moments from history, like the scene where Matt panics when he hears about the 1929 Stock Market crash. Even better, though, is a brief sequence that takes place at a political convention. Though no names are uttered and the party is never specifically identified, it’s obvious that Matt is meant to be at the 1932 Democratic Convention and the candidate that is asking for Matt’s support is obviously meant to Franklin Roosevelt. When Roosevelt is nominated without Matt’s support, Matt can only bitterly observe that he wishes he was from Chicago because then he could own a President.

Would a movie made today have the guts to say such a thing about FDR? I doubt it.

The Boss is currently available on Netflix. If you’re into politics and history (and maybe even political history), be sure to watch it before it goes away.