Reeling Backward: "No Way Out" (1950)

I first became aware of "No Way Out" because it shares the same title as a largely forgotten 1987 political thriller starring Kevin Costner, Sean Young and Gene Hackman that I am particularly fond of. Then I found out it was the first film appearance by Sidney Poitier, and also starred the great Richard Widmark in one of his inimitable villain roles. I knew I had to see it.

The movie was directed by Golden Age giant Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who also co-wrote it along with Lesser Samuels, and the two men shared an Oscar nomination for their original screenplay. It's a taut potboiler that accomplishes its narrative goals while also being quite brazen in its tackling of racial animosity circa 1950.

The word "nigger" gets bandied almost as much as your average Quentin Tarantino feature, along with a host of other racial epithets like coon, darkie and so on. Poitier, whose screen presence was defined by intelligence and grace, shows prodigious quantities of both as Luther Brooks, a first-year intern at the large county hospital who is on the receiving end of nearly all that vileness. Just 22 when the film was shot, Poitier is boyishly handsome and painfully thin.

On his first night working the prison ward, a pair of brother bandits from Beaver Canal are brought in with serious but non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. The elder, Ray Biddle (Widmark), leers and taunts at Dr. Brooks -- outraged that a black man is putting his hands on his brother. When Johnny Biddle (Dick Paxton) dies during a spinal tap because Brooks suspects he is suffering from a brain tumor, it turns into an all-out war of wills between the two men.

If Poitier is celebrated for his smarts, then perhaps no actor accessed anger as well as Widmark. In the right role -- like Tommy Udo in his screen debut in "Kiss of Death" just three years earlier -- hatred and resentment just emanated from Widmark like waves of a radiation from a nuclear meltdown.

Something about his rawboned face, the way his skull seemed to want to pop right out of his skin, set off by those enormous sapphire eyes, gave him a jackal's ravenous charm. Many of his characters, including Ray Biddle, drip with poisonous strain of humor that's funny only to them. He laughs at you, but the dead glint in his eye lets slip that he's kill you as soon as sneer at you.

Some predictable stuff happens -- Ray breaks out of the hospital prison ward, with the help of his "deef and dumb" other brother, George (Harry Bellaver), who can read lips and acts as a sort of spy for the family, visually eavesdropping on the conversations between the doctors and policemen who guard the prisoners.

Insisting that Brooks is responsible for Johnny's death, Ray whips up a race riot, rounding up his lug friends to stage an attack on the African-American part of town. The black men in the community get the drop on them, though, learning of the preparations and sending an even larger force to beat them to a pulp.

This results in perhaps the film's most singularly powerful moment, in which family members of the injured men crowd inside the hospital as their loved ones are brought inside. One woman can't stand to see Brooks treating her guy, and spits in his face. The stunned doctor simply walks away, fleeing out into the night.

Notable aside: screen icons Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee turn up in supporting roles as Dr. Brooks' brother and his wife. Though they did not get a screen credit, these are far meatier roles than the usual sort of background screen cameos you saw in this era. The husband leaves their shared home to go join the fight, talking about going for a walk. When his wife tries to stop him, his mother quietly admonishes the younger woman to let the man make his own choices.

I was expecting the Davis character to turn up dead or gravely injured -- that's how these kinds of movies normally go -- and was glad to see the film avoid the usual tropes. 

The film wastes some time and energy on Johnny Biddle's ex-wife, Edie (the sloe-eyed Linda Darnell), who gets sucked into the story. Ray refuses the doctors' request to perform an autopsy on his brother, ostensibly because he doesn't want to see him cut open but really because he fears Dr. Brooks was correct in his diagnosis of a brain tumor. So the chief resident, Dr. Wharton (Stephen McNally), and Brooks track her down thinking she's the next of kin.

Edie has escaped Beaver Canal, just barely, living hand-to-mouth in a tiny apartment with a job she hates. She goes to see Ray at the hospital, and here it's suggested they had an affair behind Johnny's back while she was still married to him. Ray, who has a brute's sense of cunning, stokes Edie's nascent racial resentment and convinces her to help him.

Her heart gets turned around, however, by Dr. Wharton's warm-hearted maid, Gladys (Amanda Randolph), who nurses her back to health after a drunken bender. Things wind up with Edie helping Dr. Brooks against Ray -- whose shield of raging machismo comes crashing down when his shot-up leg starts pumping blood all over.

I respected the way the filmmakers give depth and breadth to even the smallest characters, such as Lefty Jones, a black orderly played by Dots Johnson. Lefty has an angry scar down the side of his face, compliments of the likes of Ray Biddle. He and the other orderlies view Dr. Brooks as something of a personal hero, and are angry when he shows restraint at all the racial taunts. Their alignment is underscored by the similarities in the white outfits worn by the orderlies and Brooks' doctor kit.

It's a pretty bold thing for a movie in 1950 to show the righteous anger of the black man -- Lefty and his fellows don't even appear to get arrested for their assault on the Beaver Canal gang. "No Way Out" is one of those good movies that gets better the more you think about it.

Reeling Backward: "The Bedford Incident" (1965)

Here's something that occasionally happens, and I'm not sure if it speaks well or ill of me. I'll start watching a movie, usually a classic one, that I think I've never seen. After a while -- sometimes as much as halfway through -- I'll start to realize that I have watched it before, and somehow banished the experience from memory.

Usually, of course, that means that I didn't particularly appreciate the movie the first time around, otherwise it would have stuck in the mind.

That was my experience with "The Bedford Incident," a 1965 Cold War cautionary tale that warns against the dangers of deterrence and mutually assured destruction, the two principles that largely guided U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and its other adversaries. An overly aggressive destroyer captain played by Richard Widmark pushes an enemy sub into a desperate situation where nuclear weapons are eventually unleashed, and everyone on both vessels are killed.

This line of argument is what's known in Latin as reductio ad absurdum, i.e. an attempt to show a line of thinking is faulty by following its implications to an absurd conclusion. It's generally a silly exercise that proves very little, other than presupposing some exceedingly unlikely outcomes.

Captain Eric Finlander (Widmark) clearly is supposed to be a modern Ahab, chasing his white whale with obsessive zeal. Of course, one doesn't generally rise far in the military by repeatedly disobeying orders and bending the rules, but that's exactly the sort of commander Finlander is. Recently passed over for promotion to admiral, we wonder how he ever made it past ensign.

"Bedford" is based on a book by Mark Rascovich, with a screenplay by James Poe. This was the first directorial credit for James B. Harris, who had been Stanley Kubrick's producer for a number of years before they had a falling out. Kubrick would go on to make "Dr. Strangelove" in 1964, an absurdist comedy with similar themes about the Cold War.

If you've never seen "Fail-Safe," you should check it out. It's a virtual carbon copy of the plot of "Strangelove," about a rogue plane erroneously sent on a mission to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia, and the American president must decide whether to shoot down its own plane. Except, of course, it's a straight, dour drama.

"Bedford" is a close cousin to "Fail-Safe," and about as effective in a stodgy sort of way. It's notable for Widmark's performance as a twisted man who sees himself as heroic, a bully who squashes other in the name of duty. In terms of dramatic tension, though, it's something of a bust.

The film starts with the arrival of two people on the U.S.S. Bedord: the new ship's doctor, Chester Potter (Martin Balsam), a long-retired reservist recalled to active duty; and Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier), a famous newsmagazine journalist. Potter is excited about returning to ship duty, but it's soon quashed by the indifference and contempt of Finlander, who sees no purpose in even having a doctor aboard his ship. After all, his men are too cowed to ever report to sick call, and the aluminum construction of the Bedford makes it unlikely to survive long in a firefight, anyway.

The role of Munceford in the story is hard to fathom. Given the star power of Poitier in 1965, one would think he's set up as the protagonist with Widmark as the heavy. In execution, though, Munceford is a rather passive character who mostly just hangs around in the background, snapping photographs and taking notes. He and Finlander have a couple of blow-ups early in the movie, then an "interview" that's fairly adversarial. But most of the time, he's below decks or out of sight and mind.

Finlander rarely lets his guard down, and rides his men hard. He's particularly brutal toward Ensign Ralston (James MacArthur), a green young officer who was a star athlete. Finlander believes he must be chopped down to size in order to improve, but ends up turning the kid into a quivering mistake waiting to happen. Indeed, Ralston dooms them all while working the weapons control and mistakenly hears Finlander order him to "fire one."

Strangely, the one seaman whom Finlander does appear to coddle is a nerdy, skittish type named Queffle (Wally Cox) who's his best sonarman. Queffle expertly tracks the Russian sub for 24 hours straight, until his brain finally overloads and he has to be taken to sick bay.

Also notable is Eric Portman as Wolfgang Schrepke, a German WWII U-boat commander who's aboard as an adviser to Finlander, who clearly regards him with some level of hero worship. He acts as the captain's Svengali, whispering in his ear and attempting (unsuccessfully) to moderate his thinking and actions.

I'm not sure why "The Bedford Incident" did not make an impression on me the first time I saw it. It's a well-acted drama that's never really dull, even if it feels utterly predictable. Still, Widmark's a treat in his role, so lovably hateable.

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Defiant Ones" (1958)

I've learned that the filmography of Stanley Kramer as a director is feast or famine. This space has previously featured columns about "On the Beach" and "Ship of Fools," finding them to be heavy-handed films whose strident moralism overpowers their functionality as movies. Of course, he also directed wonderful pictures like "Look Who's Coming to Dinner," "Judgment at Nuremberg" and "Inherit the Wind."

I guess the secret to Kramer is to steer clear of any movies not starring Spencer Tracy.

Sadly, "The Defiant Ones" falls into the former category. It's a mawkish, occasionally cringe-worthy treatise against racism and imprisonment, featuring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as a white man and a black man shackled together while on the lam from a chain gang.

Despite its pedigree -- nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for both Poitier and Curtis, winning two for cinematography and original screenplay -- I found it obvious and blunt as social commentary. It's pretty much ordained that the two main characters' antagonism will boil over, and then cool into a forged friendship based on altruism and shared sacrifice.

Curtis plays Johnny "Joker" Jackson, and Poitier is Noah Cullen. Joker uses the n-word freely befitting his Southern rearing, but deep down his hard-boiled anger is directed more at a world that has beaten him down than any particular race or group. Cullen was a regular farmer and family man before he was sent to prison for assaulting a bank officer who came to foreclose his property.

It's a usual strong performance from Poitier, playing a man who recognizes that he can't change the deck that's stacked against him, but isn't about to take it lying down. It's interesting to see him play an uneducated rural man, since we associate a certain intellectualism with Poitier's screen persona.

Curtis' acting, though, is borderline awful. His famous Bronx accent bleeds through his faux Southern one like a bloody shirt, and he continually grits his teeth in a failed attempt to show the character's self-loathing -- walking around with this ridiculous rictus grin most of the time. Curtis should've taken a few notes from Humphrey Bogart, who could convey a great deal of bile just by sliding his jaw a bit.

Apart from this sub-par turn here, Curtis had a brilliant but truncated career. He essentially had a 10- or 12-year run beginning in 1957, with starring roles in some of the era's most iconic films -- "Some Like It Hot," "Spartacus," "Sweet Smell of Success" -- but by his 45th birthday in 1970 he was essentially done, reduced to silly movies and small parts.

Curtis never seemed to mind being out of the limelight, though, and turned to painting in his autumn years. "The Defiant Ones" was his only Academy Award nomination. It's flabbergasting to me that Curtis was nominated for this terrible performance, while his brilliant one in "Some Like It Hot" was not.

The screenplay has a pretty straightforward three-act structure. The first part deals with Joker and Cullen's escape when the prison van overturns, and the beginning of the manhunt to chase them down. They bicker, and Joker complains about being chained to a black man, but they realize their fates are entwined.

The second act is built around their growing desperation to escape, culminating with their capture by the residents of a tiny village while breaking into the hardware store to separate their chains. The racist mob is whipped into a frenzy by the local hothead (Claude Akins) who wants a lynching. Joker is gobsmacked by the idea that he would be hanged just like a black man, though he later admits to Cullen he saw some lynchings in his youth.

Lon Chaney Jr. has a brief but powerful role as Big Sam, the local foreman who puts a stop to the lynching, and secretly frees Cullen and Joker in the middle of the night. Again, though, Kramer and his screenwriters (Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith) aren't content with a moment of simple humanistic empathy, but have to ramp up the mawkishness by revealing that Big Sam was once a chain gang member, too.

I did admire the cutaway scenes to the pursuing posse, led by a somewhat progressive sheriff (Theodore Bikel, who also got an Oscar nod) with a distaste for employing harsher methods like attack dogs. He's badgered by a gung-ho state trooper -- played by famously gravel-voiced character actor Charles McGraw, who also was the gladiator trainer in "Spartacus" -- who deems the sheriff soft.

The final act is where things fall utterly apart. After finally coming to blows, Cullen and Joker stumble across a lonely farm wife (Cara Williams) and her young son. Although she's initially a hostage, the woman (who is never named) helps the two prisoners break their chains, feeds them and nurses Joker back to health after he collapses from his injuries and ordeal.

Then, the predictable happens: She and Joker fall in love. Or at least lust. Or something. After having sex, they wake up early in the morning before Cullen and her son, and resolve to take her car and run off on both of them. Cullen wakes up and overheard their conversation, and sees that he's no longer necessary to Joker.

The woman gives Cullen false directions to the railroad tracks through the swamp, believing he will be swallowed up by the bog and not be able to give away their plans. Joker discovers her ruse and is enraged, and races after his friend to save him, after being shot by the boy when he wrestles with his mother. Joker and Cullen fail to catch the train -- Cullen makes it aboard but refuses to let go of the injured Joker and is pulled off -- and are caught by the sheriff, wrapped in each others' arms.

This whole sequence is either way too short or too long. The idea that a woman would be willing to abandon her life and child for a man she's only met a few hours earlier -- a runaway prisoner at that -- simply strains credulity to the breaking point. Granted, she's lonely and dreams of life in a big city, but to believe she's that desperate we would need to know a lot more about the character than we learn in a relatively short amount of screen time.

As Joker points out right before running off, she doesn't even know his name.

I wanted to like "The Defiant Ones," but its strident moralizing and hammy story construction put it into the "Bad Kramer" file for me.

2 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Blackboard Jungle"

"Blackboard Jungle" is an amazing film, but to me this is the most amazing: It was written, shot, edited and released in the space of three months.

It went on to become a watershed movie about youth violence. It launched the career of Vic Morrow, as the chief hoodlum, and gave a big boost to that of Sidney Poitier. Jamie Farr debuted as a slow-witted student. And it was one of Glenn Ford's better-known roles.

If that weren't enough, the last-minute prominent inclusion of Bill Haley & The Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" into the soundtrack was credited with helping launch rock 'n' roll.

How writer/director Richard Brooks (working from the novel by Evan Hunter) accomplished all that in 90 days is beyond me.

Seen today, it's still a gripping account of a well-meaning young teacher faced with a school full of problem kids who don't want to learn. The depiction of social unrest is rather dated -- the worst thing the miscreants do is steal a newspaper truck and beat up teachers -- but the dramatic tension of teachers vs. students has aged well.

There's been a long and often ignoble tradition of movies about teachers in rough schools, and "Blackboard Jungle" kicked it off. It got me to thinking that even over-the-top revenge fantasies like "The Substitute" and "187" are descendants of this film, though the nut has rolled pretty far downhill from the tree.

Ford plays Rick Dadier, a WWII vet who went to a girls' college on the GI Bill and is looking to launch his teacher career at North Manual High School. It's a rough inner-city school where the students all seem to wear greasy ducktail haircuts, leather jackets and perpetually smug expressions. The principal seems delusional in insisting that there's no disobedience problem at his school, as long as it doesn't come spilling in his door.

Things start right off the first day in the classroom when Dadier nearly has his head taken off by a hurled baseball. The crushed section of blackboard, looking a spider web, remains throughout the school year.

The chief troublemakers are Artie West (Morrow) and Greg Miller (Poitier), the leaders of the other boys. Dadier spends most of the movie under the mistaken impression that the two are in cahoots, when in fact they can't stand each other. Miller turns out to be a smart, hardworking kid who's just seen two many adults turn their back on his school, and him.

West is a straight-out criminal, organizing his gang to beat up Dadier and another teacher after they've been drinking in a bar. He even sends letters to Dadier's pregnant wife claiming he's having an affair with another teacher. One day Dadier accosts West on the street after seeing some of his gang knock over a truck. "This is my classroom out here," West warns. "And I'm gonna teach you."

Poitier and Morrow were both pushing 30 when they starred in the movie, which itself has become a long-standing cinematic tradition for films set in high schools. Poitier would go on to star in a similar movie himself -- this time as the teacher -- a dozen years later with "To Sir, with Love."

Louis Calhern has a nice supporting role as a veteran teacher who's given up all hope, but can't help rooting for his enterprising younger colleague. Richard Kiley plays a fellow rookie who isn't as successful in reaching out to his kids. There's a scene where he announces that he's going to bring his swing records into the classroom so his students can study the mathematical construction of the melody, and we already know what's coming.

Despite the slight staleness of the plot, "Blackboard Jungle" remains a riveting drama filled with some wonderful performances. Ford is especially touching as a frustrated guy who doesn't know whether to use compassion, violence, friendliness or some other tool in order to break through. In the end, he does it by showing them a movie.

3.5 stars