Great title, good film, one of Dede Allen's first, and very much a New York (as opposed to Hollywood) film. Well, it feels gritty, it's on location, it's got that vibey late fifties score under everything, its photography is high contrast. I don't know, it just feels different. Made by Harry Belafonte's own production company, it's also a pertinent look at race relations, the irony being that we've only just seen Robert Ryan kill a Jew in Crossfire, now he's after Blacks. (His is a seriously damaged character; a psychopath.)
The photography - in 4x3 and using infra red film, like Soy Cuba and The Haunting - is by Joseph Brun, score by John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet. The screenplay is credited to black author John Oliver Killens, but a front for blacklisted Abraham Polonsky (Force of Evil) who Belafonte had wanted to work with, and Nelson Gidding, based on a novel by William P. McGivern.
You know it's all going to go wrong, but not quite how wrong - the ending is, as they say, a doozy. Great cast includes Ed Begley, Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame.
It's very well made, of course. When the trio arrive in Melton, we see first a shot of a train, then their car comes into view. Why show the train? Then tensions build between Belafonte and Ryan and at the critical moment the tension is broken by - what? - the sound of a loud passing train.
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| Belafonte is 94 |
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