BLACK TUESDAY (1954) is quite the thing. An unusual noir, combining the chiarscuro we associate with the genre with the wider screen ratio we don’t. I wonder if Cortez would have had to “protect” for television, and therefore I wonder what the film would look like cropped from 1:1.85 to 1:1.33. The film is a prison breakout/hostage drama, so it’s always about being trapped, so the tighter ratio could make sense, but it’s also an ensemble piece, so having room for supporting characters would also be valuable. I also don’t know if the wider-screen version is a masked version of a more spacious Academy Ratio one, in which case further cropping would do nothing to restore it to its alternative form.
OK, I checked. Oddly, it does look like the film would visually hold together if seen in a pan-and-scan version (but without the panning, just holding on the centre). But VLC Media Player won’t accurately frame-grab the cropped images, so I can’t show you. The below two pics show how the image gets displaced, cropping too much of the right of frame. Why? I dunno.
But never mind all that. Our director is Hugo Fregonese, Argentinian emigre making his Hollywood debut. It’s considerably more stylish than anything else I’ve seen from him. The Val Lewton-produced APACHE DRUMS has an even better script, I think, but HF doesn’t push the boat out the way he does here. THE LODGER (the Palance one) looks great, but isn’t great. Look at the diopter shot below!
As I said, this paired up beautifully with SUDDENLY, but here the political undercurrent is more progressive, anti-death penalty rather than pro-gun. Edward G. Robinson is a gangster on death row who busts out with a few other condemned men, one of whom (Peter Graves) has access to stolen loot. What follows is taut, violent and overwhelmingly negative, which is very bracing. Robinson excels at making wholly bad men seem compelling and almost redeemable. I found myself caring more about him than any of his anodyne abductees, which might be a narrative problem, but in fact the film would have suffered more without a riveting antagonist. (At fadeout, one of the good guys is suffering from life-threatening injuries, and the movie fades out without bothering to reassure us that he’ll recover.)
Robinson’s one redeeming trait is his love for moll Jean Parker, a pre-code star making a welcome return. Supposedly Parker’s star faded because she was “difficult” — which could mean anything. Her beauty has hardened a touch, making her perfect casting here, but she still provides a softening for Eddie G’s character. And it’s nice to see him with a more age-appropriate moll than usual — these two have obviously been through a lot together.
The film has a really superb opening shot where a restless track-with-pans ties together the equally restless death row inmates as they pace in their cells and a blues tune is hummed and banged out on a wooden chair. Unfortunately, it promotes a belief that the subsidiary cons will be important to the story and that these desperate men will be some kind of tight unit, like THE DIRTY DOZEN. In fact, Robinson turns two of them loose on the freeway to serve as a distraction for his continuing escape — which is a good surprise, I guess, but I was interested in the Black convict particularly, and it feels like so was Fregonese.
Writer Sydney Boehm also gave us THE ATOMIC CITY and THE BIG HEAT. It’s good and hard. If anyone, including the actors playing them, had more interest in the nice people, the film would be stronger, but we move from one seething, sweaty situation to another and it’s powerful and exhausting.
The high-contrast approach is so intense, even the daylight scenes are oppressive, the highlights bleached out and the shadows just biding their time, waiting to encroach. I don’t recall Cortez’s Sam Fuller movies looking this shadowy and grim, maybe I just haven’t seen the right prints. Yet.
For some reason I am amused by this shot — Graves being labelled “laundry equipment.” Harsh but fair. The box seems to dance about between shots too, an Overlook Hotel approach to continuity holding sway.
shadowplay 