FORCE OF EVIL
A
USA (78 mi) 1948 d: Abraham Polonsky
Whatever he tries to
do is wrong. Because it has to be wrong. Because the situation is such that
whatever you do is wrong. All films about crime are about capitalism, because
capitalism is about crime. I mean, quote-unquote, morally speaking. At least
that's what I used to think. Now I'm convinced.
—Abraham Polonsky, from Red
Hollywood (1996)
One of the neglected gems of the 1940’s, a unique experience
in American film history, described as “one of the fiercest dissections of
laissez faire capitalism ever to come out of Hollywood” by Nicholas Christopher
in his book Somewhere in the Night: Film
Noir and the American City, this is a brilliant Black and White film noir
with John Garfield at his best as an attorney who works for a mobster and finds
himself, and his brother (Thomas Gomez), caught in a numbers racket
scheme. When one points to cynicism, this may be what they had in mind,
as this film is all about attitude, trying to get over in a foolproof way of
beating the system. Screw the other guy, as in the Wall Street jungle,
it’s all about self preservation. Very few films compare to Bogart and Bacall,
with Out
of the Past (1947) being one of them, and this is another.
Particularly notable for its unusual, highly stylized and poetic dialogue,
where one can almost hear the voice of Bogie reading them, with a standout
voiceover that compares with the best, becoming one of the more radical
inventions of 1940’s cinema. Having written the intense screenplay for
Garfield in Body
and Soul (1947), a boxer who defies the mob and refuses to throw a fight,
seen as a victim of a ruthless capitalistic system where the fix is in, the
film is as much Polonsky’s as director Robert Rossen’s, where Polonsky
allegedly prevented the director from altering the finale. FORCE OF EVIL
is Polonsky’s sole example of his directing brilliance before he was
blacklisted and could only work as an uncredited screenwriter for both films
and television over the next twenty years. Garfield suffered a worse
fate, having grown up in poverty in the streets of New York during the
Depression, where he became associated with gritty, hard-nosed, and
working-class characters, and while his wife was a communist, there’s no indication
Garfield was ever a member, nonetheless the House Un-American Activities
Committee hounded Garfield to his death, as after his original testimony, he
learned they were reviewing his testimony for possible perjury charges, where
he died at the age of 39 of a heart attack, allegedly aggravated by the stress
of the blacklisting. Both Polonsky and Garfield were blacklisted as much
for the tone of their films as their politics, where Polonsky’s heroes are
cocky, self-assured loners who are outside the mainstream of society, the kind
of guys that break the rules in order to get ahead, often disregarding the
interests of others. These were not the cardboard cut out caricatures of
morally righteous men that dominated Hollywood cinema. Polonsky also
wrote a part for a washed-up boxer (Canada Lee, who also died shortly after
being blacklisted) in Body
and Soul (1947), one of the earlier examples of a black character portrayed
with such humanity, a man exploited whose feelings and emotions mattered,
exactly the kind of challenging work that was viewed as critical of America and
raised the suspicions of the HUAC Committee.
Released as a B-movie, adapted from Ira Wolfert’s 1943 novel
Tucker’s People, this is an
underworld thriller completely ignored in its time, while it’s now seen as a
cult classic, where The Hollywood
Reporter complained that the direction was “more concerned with plugging
the verbose dialogue than in achieving action and dramatic values,” while
modern critics now praise the film for exactly those same qualities. An
outgrowth of the Group Theatre collective of the 1930’s
where its New York City members agonized over whether film work in Hollywood
was tantamount to selling out, the work was a major influence on director
Martin Scorsese who called the film a seminal influence on his own gangster
dramas Mean
Streets (1973) and Goodfellas
(1990), claiming nobody played guilt better than Garfield, where Garfield’s conflicted
anti-hero brought a cynical edge to the picture. Something of a morality
play, Garfield plays Joe Morse, a selfish, Wall Street lawyer who grew up on
the streets of New York and whose sole client is mobster Ben Tucker (Roy
Roberts) who controls the numbers racket, a man with an office so high that
it’s practically “in the clouds” overlooking Wall Street, while his brother Leo
(Gomez) is a small-time numbers operator. Both become casualties of their
ultimate desire for success, where organized crime becomes the family business,
corrupted by the process while seeking the American dream. Looking behind
the veneer of fair play, these men align themselves with outlaws and criminals,
trying to catch a break by cheating and fixing the books, which is seen as the
real American way in a cutthroat capitalistic system. Polonsky was the son of a
Jewish pharmacist growing up in New York, graduating from City College and
Columbia Law School while developing a strong political conscience early in
life when nothing had a greater social impact than the Great Depression, “I
came of age in a country that had come to a standstill, with fifty million
unemployed and the banks closed.” Polonsky landed a career writing for
radio in the late 1930’s, including Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre of the Air,
before deciding to work as the educational director and newspaper editor of a
regional CIO union north of New York City. Even after being hired as a
screenwriter by Paramount in 1945, Polonsky remained an unapologetic Marxist
with a commitment to leftist values that never wavered, where he continued as
an educator throughout his life. A quarter of a century before THE
GODFATHER (1972), Polonsky’s ultimate masterpiece exposes the striking
similarities between American business and organized crime, where Scorsese
notes, “It’s not just the individual who’s corrupted, but the entire
system.” Polonsky crafts a film that describes the greed at the heart of
American capitalism, where in his view, while wealth and power comprise success
in America, they also contribute to spiritual and physical ruination.
The film opens with the matter-of-fact offscreen voice of
Joe Morse speaking over an overhead shot of Wall Street where cars and
pedestrians are seen like ants scurrying below, “Tomorrow, July 4th, I intended
to make my first million dollars...temporarily, the enterprise was slighty
illegal, you see I was the lawyer for the numbers racket...The suckers bet on
any combination of three numbers. Twenty million bettors a day in the United
States, an annual income of over $100,000,000...it seemed a shame so much good
money to go to waste in other people's pockets...” The mob controls the
gambling racket, and the fix is in for popular number “776” to come up a winner
on the 4th of July, a scheme that will force the small time operators to go out
of business when they’re unable to make all the winning payouts, allowing
Tucker to swoop in and gain a controlling monopoly. Morse has
developed his own philosophy where he believes the only “natural” human
reaction is greed, not guilt, calling anyone not included in their scam
“suckers,” where he’s completely dismissive of ordinary people. Morse’s
conflict, however, is he wants to save his brother Leo from going under, like
the other small-time operators expected to go belly up, so without revealing
the actual details of the scam, he tries to get him in on the swindle, but has
little luck convincing him, as Leo is a proud and seemingly morally upright
business operator who has to be reminded by Joe that he’s actually working for
a criminal enterprise, where characters keep forgetting that they’re not
actually honest men, that they're crooks. The duality of their
relationship is built into the script, one feeling forced into evil and the
other talking himself into believing he’s a good man even though both are
complicit in the same corrupt system, where one wants millions while the other
is content to settle for thousands, making the point that racketeering is not
so different from other businesses in a capitalist society, except it’s theft
on a grander scale, exactly like The
Emperor Jones (1933), where a moral distinction is made between the nickel
and dime small-time theft and the real thieves that steal millions, major
players who always seem to come out on top smelling like roses. Drawn
into the conflict is Leo’s secretary Doris (Beatrice Pearson in her film debut,
before eventually returning back to a life on the stage), who overhears the
brother’s argument in Leo’s office, whose naïve innocence attracts Joe, who is
otherwise having a sordid affair with Tucker’s scene stealing femme fatale
wife, Edna (Marie Windsor), where there’s an interesting parallel between the
women and the good/bad dichotomy of the brothers. The role of Doris plays
into the complexity of the movie’s themes, as she projects a clean, all
American girl image, yet she’s been a secretary for a criminal operation for
several years. After she gets arrested, when Leo’s operation is busted by
the cops from an internal tip, this moral stain plays prominently in her
decisions, as only afterwards does she allow herself to be drawn into Joe’s
more contemptible world, as if it’s a way of expressing how much she loathes
herself for getting caught up in these murky waters. Their sexual
tension, however, is expressed nearly entirely through the crackle of their
seductive dialogue, where she’s undeniably drawn to Joe’s naked self-interest
and nefarious lifestyle. After awhile, the tone of her initial innocence
seems as world weary as Garfield’s pessimistic voiceover, both conveying the
mood of classic film noir, where emotions get swept under a tidal wave of
criminal deceit.
The driving force behind the film is Garfield, perhaps best
known for his sizzling performance with Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS
TWICE (1946), which shocked the nation when Garfield was seen onscreen using
his tongue when kissing Turner, but also established Garfield as a matinee idol
with raw sex appeal. More rough-edged than most leading men, he is
rugged, broad-shouldered, displaying a certain sexual swagger as he attempts to
charm his way out of trouble, smooth under pressure, even when on the wrong side
of the law, but also strong-willed and verbally combative, known for taking
things personally, usually ending up fighting through the ethical morass to set
things straight, where he never gives anything less than a compelling
performance. Standing up to Joe in this film is his brother Leo, an
honorable man who cares about the people that work for him, always looking
ruffled and disheveled with sweat pouring off his brow, a more neurotic
everyman who is disgusted by the mob and the way they threaten and intimidate,
wanting out of the business altogether when they take over, but the more he
wants out, the more Joe reels him back in, trying to protect him by forcing him
to accept conditions that he stopped questioning long ago. The film has very modern implications, even
when written more than half a century ago, as our current time is fraught with
the same implications of the predatory practices of capitalism, with rampant
capitalistic mergers and acquisitions, often under shady circumstances, where
larger corporations are continually swallowing up smaller companies in order to
monopolize the competition, all in the name of interglobal free markets.
Today Wall Street institutions can be blamed for insatiable greed and
opportunism, but also for destroying the lives of so many ordinary
people. The film’s title was never more apt, as every character is
touched and tainted by the same allure, even against their will, as they simply
can’t stop themselves. Relentlessly grim, the film is enhanced by the bold
visual stylization from cinematographer George Barnes, using abstract
compositions, alternating between high and low angles, conveying a
claustrophobic world of difficult choices, where he creates a strangely
unpopulated city that emphasizes the bold architectural grandiosity of the
buildings and facades, while the streets remain virtually empty, where many
images are meant to resemble Edward Hopper paintings. Especially
impressive is the final sequence, a climactic descent winding their way down a
stone stairway to the rocks below under the George Washington Bridge along the
Hudson River, “I just kept going down and down there. It was like going
down to the bottom of the world,” a wrenching journey into the criminal
underworld, complete with perilous consequences, which is such a stunner that
it was likely in Hitchcock’s mind when shooting Vertigo
(1958) under the Golden Gate Bridge. The film tanked at its unfathomable
1948 Christmas holiday release (who in Hollywood thought this was a Christmas
movie?), where the assistant director, by the way, was Robert Aldrich, who
would go on to direct the apocalyptic film noir classic Kiss Me
Deadly (1955), no slouch himself, often thought of as the film that spelled
the end of the film noir era, while this film was selected to the National Film Registry in 1994.
