Act of Violence
Fred Zinnemann’s dark thriller gives us Robert Ryan as a gun-toting killer, with Van Heflin’s respected family man his intended victim. But who is the villain? Murky morality enters via the aftermath of a heinous wartime crime. What are the limits of personal responsibility in extreme circumstances? Does the movie imply that American prosperity is founded on less-than-noble deeds? Janet Leigh, Mary Astor and Phyllis Thaxter co-star in a core classic Film Noir, near- perfectly directed.
Act of Violence
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 82 min. / Available at MovieZyng / Street Date June 25, 2024 / 21.99
Starring: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, Phyllis Thaxter, Berry Kroeger, Taylor Holmes, Connie Gilchrist, Will Wright.
Cinematography: Robert Surtees
Art Directors: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters
Women’s Costumes: Helen Rose
Film Editor: Conrad A. Nervig
Second Unit Director: Andrew Marton
Original Music: Bronislau Kaper
Screenplay by Robert L. Richards from a story by Collier Young
Produced by William H. Wright
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann’s directing career began with a couple of interesting, enduring films made in Weimar Germany and pre-war Mexico. He then labored for 8 years directing short subjects at MGM. Being willing to direct a moppet child star was Zinnemann’s ticket to feature work; after little ‘Butch’ Jenkins made an unforgettable debut in Clarence Brown’s The Human Comedy, MGM put him in a couple of follow-ups. Zinnemann had no way of knowing that those two kid pix would position him for a perfect career move. The partly German-produced The Search had a new actor, Montgomery Clift. It needed an American director who spoke German and was good with kids.
The Search was a triumph, the most moving picture of its year. Fred Zinnemann’s sensitive direction was noticed by the entire industry. He immediately proceeded to MGM’s Act of Violence, one of the studio’s best-ever films noir. Starring Van Heflin and Robert Ryan, it offered solid roles to three talented actresses on the MGM contract payroll. Partly filmed at night in downtown Los Angeles, the movie is a veritable noir tour of the Bunker Hill neighborhood. Zinnemann’s direction never allows the tension to let up, right through the satisfying finale.
Act of Violence may have been conceived as an independent production, by a group that would later call themselves The Filmakers: Ida Lupino, Howard Duff and Collier Young. Writer Young instead sold his story idea to MGM. At a time when ‘social critique’ movies about racism, anti-semitism and radical politics were making the rounds, Act of Violence has some dark things to say about veterans in the post-war environment, the the refusal of some war wounds to heal.
“What are you gonna prove anyway, with your vengeance, your violence?”
A great example of what makes a noir film noir, Act of Violence is a postwar revenge story that doesn’t involve private detectives, organized crime or massive conspiracies. Instead, an ‘upwardly mobile’ new family looking forward to living the Good Life is destroyed from within by a dark secret. As the psychology of the story darkens, sunny daytime scenes give way to stark, pitiless night exteriors. In a complacent peacetime setting, Act of Violence posits anxious dread as a given, as if personal disaster awaits us all. Fine acting from Van Heflin and Robert Ryan add to the immediacy of the tension. The conflict feels real and feels like it’s happening now.
Three years after the victory, proud WW2 veteran Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is doing fine. He has a pretty wife, Edith (Janet Leigh) and a baby son. As a developer-contractor in a growing California town, he’s breaking ground for new housing that will likely lift him into a new bracket of prosperity. But everything is threatened: the grim and determined Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) comes to town looking for Frank … with a gun. Despite his leg injury, Parkson tracks Enley to a mountain lake. He then slips into Frank’s home, driving Edith Enley half crazy with fear. Frank won’t tell her the full reason why Joe is after him, and why he can’t go to the police: Frank has secrets he doesn’t dare face up to publicly. It has to do with an incident four years previous, when both men were prisoners of war in Germany. Working himself into a panic, Frank’s only ‘plan’ is to flee from the dangerous killer.
Joe Parkson at first seems some kind of psycho killer, until a woman who loves him arrives. Ann Sturges (Phyllis Thaxter of Thirty Seconds over Tokyo and Bewitched) catches up with Joe, but can’t deter him from his murderous, suicidal course. When Joe traces Frank Enley to a contractor’s convention in downtown Los Angeles, his quarry flees to a skid row bar. There Frank is picked up by B-girl Pat (Mary Astor, seven years after The Maltese Falcon). She introduces him to a pair of opportunistic associates. The crooked attorney Gavery (Taylor Holmes of Nightmare Alley) and the slimy Johnny (Berry Kroeger of Gun Crazy) offer to eliminate Parkson for cash. Drunk, panicked and unable to face his own guilt, Enley allows a rendezvous-ambush to be arranged …
The original Psycho Soldier?
Is Robert Ryan’s Joe Parkson the Travis Bickle of 1948? The years immediately after WW2 inspired stories about the readjustment problems of returning soldiers, as seen in Till the End of Time, Pride of the Marines and The Best Years of Our Lives, the movie that initiated a bold trend of liberal social conscience filmmaking. I don’t recall the concept of the ‘disturbed soldier’ surfacing again until the Vietnam war, when political discord and exploitation filmmaking combined to make it seem as if every veteran were a walking time bomb. The exceptionally sensitive actor Robert Ryan was again cast for his ability to be tough and implacable. Under the stark main titles, Ryan’s Joe checks into a cheap hotel and cocks his .45 automatic pistol in anticipation of blowing a way a man who was once his best friend. The main title flashes on screen. The rest of the credits are withheld until the film’s end, an unusual thing for this year, at this studio.
Act of Violence doesn’t present a very attractive image of American manhood. Both leading male characters are damaged goods: Joe Parkson’s physical handicap is obvious but his obsession with revenge is far worse. Frank Enley would seem a poster boy for American success, building wealth for his new family in a peacetime ‘earned’ by the victory. But Frank is also a coward and a moral weakling. Each man has a ‘woman back home’ unaware of their shared past and its dark secret. Parkson’s loyal sweetheart Ann opposes his vengeful quest every step of the way. Enley’s poor wife Edith is hit by a blast of disillusion, through a confession that reveals weakness and guilt in a man she’s always idolized. Trying to protect her new family, Edith does as she’s told, even when Frank repeatedly lies to her. She has no response to his whimpering explanation of the fatal wartime incident. All of his bunkmates were horribly murdered; Parkson survived only by sheer luck.
Frank rationalizes his actions by claiming that he was actually trying to protect his fellow prisoners. He has managed a comfortable denial for three years, thinking that he his guilt coould stay buried back in the German POW camp. But as soon as Parkson materializes he crumbles into a whining baby, alternately excusing and condemning himself, and most memorably crying out in a downtown L.A. tunnel for Parkson not to die. Does Frank Enley’s bad judgment in the P.O.W. camp still seem so absolutely unforgivable? POWs like John McCain are laudable heroes, but only a draconian code of honor demands that starving men die like noble Knights, remaining fully responsible for their actions as they succumb. Unfortunately, Frank appears to have directly sold out his comrades.
(Spoiler, or Ethical Quicksand)
MGM wasn’t the kind of studio to embrace wholly pessimistic finales, not even for a film noir. Only by storytelling skill does Act of Violence suggest that something uplifting may result from a moral disaster. After drunkenly turning an underworld killer loose on Parkson, the self-loathing Enley waits until the very last second to try to do the right thing. But let’s do the Moral Math: back in the POW camp Enley committed what everybody agrees is an unforgivable crime — even though that crime was weakness, not malice. To cover it up, he puts in motion a much more direct murderous crime. If he sacrifices everything to ‘fix’ Crime Number 2, does that really affect his culpability for Crime #1 ?
Act of Violence wants to give Frank the benefit of the doubt … his dramatic last-moment action even sways Joe Parkson, who receives a morale lift — “Gee, honey, maybe people aren’t scum after all!” But the movie doesn’t depict the bad news for Edith Enley and Baby Enley. The loyal wife of a potentially murderous vigilante gets roses and kisses, while the loyal wife of an uncovered Quisling isn’t worth our attention. The emotional arc makes sense, but not so much the morality of the situation. Yep, Bad Things Happen in Wartime. And also Not in Wartime.
Act of Violence gives the great Robert Ryan a solid role, but he was becoming typecast as hateful villains, obsessed and unreasonably violent. The movie really belongs to Van Heflin. We never lose full sympathy for Frank Enley, no matter how craven his behavior. Heflin was at his best when playing morally conflicted good men, as in the excellent Hollywood movie about all-American ‘terrorism,’ The Raid.
All three of the film’s women are exceptionally good. Janet Leigh had been at MGM just a year and was establishing her versatility; this was her most serious picture to date. The legendary Mary Astor was still quite busy; her very non-glamorous ‘Pat’ is a sad alcoholic, a loser at the low end of the femme fatale spectrum. The twinkly-eyed Phyllis Thaxter won over America opposite Van Johnson in her first movie but came late to the MGM stable and was soon consigned to minor roles. Her Ann adds needed balance to the Robert Ryan character. She’d perform the same duty for John Garfield in the superb noir The Breaking Point, again making an extreme situation 100% believable.
Director Fred Zinnemann always showed himself to be a great humanist, in fair-minded, adult-themed movies like The Search, The Nun’s Story and Julia. He was a liberal, but not one who fell into the traps set by the HUAC Red-hunters. When Hollywood’s directors gathered in 1950 to decide whether or not to demand a nonCommunist loyalty oath from its members, Cecil B. DeMille was already secretly informing on his colleagues to HUAC. This was a time when columnist Hedda Hopper was writing that “those who aren’t loyal should be put in concentration camps before it’s too late.” At the fiery DGA meeting, when cornered on his rabid politics, DeMille read a list of names of directors — all foreign-born or Jewish — that he identified as the most likely to be disloyal. He reportedly read them with an exaggerated ‘foreign’ accent. The ones always quoted were ‘Villy Vilder,’ and ‘Fred Tsinnemann.’
The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Act of Violence is the expected perfect remaster of a B&W favorite that applies MGM’s production polish to non-glamorous subject matter. By the late ’40s B&W film stocks had been refined to the point that projection prints had a terrific contrast range and texture, whether the desired look was gritty or silky-smooth. The razor sharp soundtrack highlights small details, bringing our attention to Joe Parkson’s shuffling feet, before we see him in action.
Cinematographer Robert Surtees would proceed to shoot Intruder in the Dust, King Solomon’s Mines and Quo Vadis. What still works 100% in Act of Violence are the evocative downtown L.A. street scenes at night. Frank Enley staggers around the Angels Flight funicular railway, avoiding wind-blown trash. The filmmakers seem aware that we will eventually revere the Lost Bunker Hill area as urban-magical. Who knew that these film noir pictures would be the only existing record of a long-gone urban millieu?
Act of Violence was part of a dynamite Warners Film Noir Classic Collection Volume 4 back in 2007, a ten-title DVD set that still commands a steep price. Those encodings were given plenty of extras, including Sparkhill featurettes, that have been carried over here. Dr. Drew Casper provides the entertaining commentary track. The efficient featurette Deal with the Devil utilizes sound bite input from Alain Silver, Oliver Stone and Richard Schickel. An original trailer rounds out the noir-related extras.
The WAC also throws on HD-remastered MGM cartoon short subjects. Goggle Fishing Bear is an MGM Barney Bear item, not a favorite but indeed well-animated. The Shell-Shocked Egg is another cute animal story with a turtle named Clem, a Merrie Melody from Warners.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Act of Violence
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper
Act of Violence: Dealing with the Devil five-minute interview featurette
Two MGM Cartoons, remastered in HD: Goggle Fishing Bear and The Shell-Shocked Egg
Theatrical Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 30, 2024
(7156viol)
Final product for this review was provided free by The Warner Archive Collection.
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