Force of Evil (1948)
Director: Abraham Polonsky
Honors:
This gritty film noir about wavering ethics in an unethical
world of fixing a gambling racket would set a new tone for its genre. Inspiring
future generations of filmmakers with its allusions to age old tales, its raw
place setting, candid cinematography within the streets of New York City, and
tragic story would set the feature up to being quietly one of the greatest film
noirs of all time. In its day it lacked any significant praise, thanks in part
to its director/co-screenwriter becoming one of the members of the notorious
Hollywood black list, the picture would grow in reverence as a cult classic,
becoming a treasure of 1940s noir cinema.
Force of Evil is a
crime noir about a crooked lawyer attached to a plot to monopolize a gambling
market attempts to help protect his brother, a possible victim of his criminal client’s
scheme. Having long left morals behind for the spoils of working for a crime
boss, lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) helps his client, Ben Tucker (Roy
Roberts), attempt to control the New York numbers racket by rigging the system that
would squash all the individual racketeer “banks.” One of these small banks if
ran by Joe’s long estranged brother Leo (Thomas Gomez) whom Joe wants to shield
by absorbing him into the plan. Leo’s hesitation to join his brother comes out
of the decency of Leo’s employees, including bookkeeper Doris whom Joe tries to
romance, who Leo does not want to fall indebted to dangerous gangsters causing,
a notion that causes nervousness over the whole plan. The loose end that is Leo
becomes a deadly pawn in a criminal game of Tucker’s old partner of Tucker, Ficco
(Paul Fix), to pressures his way into the plot. When it is revealed that Ficco
had Leo killed the devastation to Joe boils over into a confrontation between
him and the partner bosses as Joe attempts to end this evil.
What is admirable about this feature is how contemporary it
can feel compared to the crime movies that would appear during the 1970s and
80s from the likes of Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese. No doubt it is
clear that Force of Evil played a
part in inspiring these future filmmakers, screenwriters, and future features
of organized crime dramas. Force of Evil
does a remarkable job at building suspense, especially in its climatic final
scenes as moments of dread saturate the picture’s most tense moments. The
film’s climax builds to a face-off set in the dark, and I am not referring to
that old Hollywood form of day-for-night shots, but rather a near pitch black frame
with only hints of outlines to roughly suggest who or what we are looking as
the tension boils over. This use of heavy shadows heightening the confrontation
pulls any viewer to the edge of their seat in showdown that is not fully
revealed until we see the survivor, Joe, step back into a small pool of light.
Also noteworthy in the film is the use of location filming
in New York City as the picture captures a near documentary style, utilizing
the dinginess of its streets and waterfronts to accentuate the grittiness of
the story in this crime drama. The city is not the focus of the story, but when
its location shooting is presented it gathers with it a raw touch that projects
added meaning to the scenes.
For Abram Polonsky, a former successful essayist, novelist,
and radio writer before arriving in Hollywood as a screenwriter following the
war, this feature marked his directorial debut. As a first time director
Polonsky would be in need of a good deal of help to get his bearings on putting
together his first production. Here Poloansky adapts Ira Wolfert’s novel
“Tucker’s People,” with aid from the novelist while the first time director was
to feeling his way through his first film while at the helm of production. To
help him with filmmaking technique of staging cameras and blocking, assistant director
Don Weis ministered a large amount of his suggestive help for Polonsky to help
get his vision across. Garfield, the star of Polonsky’s most recently penned
picture Body and Soul (1947) and
friend of the first time director would come aboard to star in the feature,
helping to ease Polonsky into director’s chair. All this help would pay off in
a handsome looking feature, with a beautifully poetic script, and a look that was
somehow familiar yet also fresh in style.
For John Garfield this performance as Joe Morse may be
considered his finest work in his screen career. Delivering a character that
was crooked, confident, compassionate, deeply flawed, conflicted, and all
together multi dimensional, he delivers a performance of a lifetime. Sadly his
career would shortly after stall due to his connections to the Communist scare.
Following the black listing of Polonsky, a member of the Communist Party for
his socialist values, Garfield’s unwillingness to cooperate with the House
Un-American Activities Committee out of his stance for the First Amendment saw
himself blacklisted as well. Shortly thereafter Garfield would pass away from a
mysterious illness in the Spring 1952, at the age of only 39. Despite his
blacklisting, man audiences were great fans of his work, and his untimely death
became an event of great mourning for Hollywood fans of the day.
The remainder of the cast, including veteran Thomas Gomez,
Broadway starlet Beatrice Pearson making in a brief Hollywood career, vamp
Marie Windsor, and character actors Roy Roberts and Paul Fix all supporting a
strong ensemble that carries with it a similar gravitas as the cast of The Godfather or Goodfellas experience decades later. Their characters may not be
over the top, but they help supply the drama and the poetic deliveries of that
drive the drama of the feature. The heartache, suspense, and friction or their
performances are felt throughout with their acting in the film under the guiding
watchful eye Polonsky.
Even with all that said, Force
of Evil was a trouble production for the independent Enterprise Studios, a studio
co-founded by John Garfield. Enterprise would have a falling out with their
distributor United Artists during the making of the feature and was on the
brink of folding when MGM swooped in and pick of the remainder of Enterrprise’s
works as it eventually closed its doors, releasing Force of Evil under its banner. Despite MGM being known for lavish
and rather family friendly fare, Force of
Evil was a curious pick up for the studio as the film was a gritty crime
drama more in line with Warner Bros style of picture with plenty of less than
wholesome moments in it.
With an odd premiere date around Christmas of 1948 the
picture failed to find success. Critics’ response was generally mixed,
hesitantly praising it for the acting, cinematography, and story. The negative
reviews the picture saw may have to due in part to the recent red scare and
aPolonsky and Garfield’s names attached to the negative reactions of ultra-conservatives.
Also, the Christmas season is not the typical time for a gritty crime noir as the
picture turned out poor numbers domestically at the box office. International
critic and audiences were more kind to the picture, but would not offset the
losses of the film in the end. In any case, Force
of Evil was a failure and Enterprise Studios was dissolved.
Both Garfield and Polonsky would be blacklisted shortly
after, Garfield passing away not long after while Polonsky resorting to finding
work in secret under pseudonyms until he was welcomed back into the industry
two decades later in 1969 with Tell Them
Willie Boy Is Here. In time Force
of Evil would develop essentially a cult following, rising in praise with the
evolution of the filmmaking world. For a new generation of filmmakers they abserved
the grittiness of the storytelling and cinematography as something great,
incorporating it into their own future endeavors. As mentioned before, we would
come to see evidence of its influence in films like The Godfather and many of Martin Scorsese’s works with the dramatic
handling of morals and family as well as use of language.
Today Force of Evil
remains a quite gem of film noir that historians have long praised. Sadly the
film would not see its praises during its day, but has done much to inspire
those that had come after it and will continue to do so into the future. Now
the picture comes as a highly recommended feature for students of film to watch
and discover on their own as a study of motion picture’s power in micro and
macro levels, as this small film actually shared greater impact on the industry
than most may ever known.
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