NFR Project: 'Force of Evil' (1948)

 

NFR Project: “Force of Evil”

Dir: Abraham Polonsky

Scr: Abraham Polonsky, Ira Wolfert

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: Art Seid

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1947

76 min.

It turns out the film noir could bear the weight of social commentary. Abraham Polonsky (1910-1999) wrote the screenplay for Body and Soul (1947), a popular prize-fighting picture starring John Garfield. He was then given the chance to direct as well as write. The result was Force of Evil, a thinly disguised critique of capitalism that later got its director and star in hot water with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

The story is simple: Garfield plays a crooked lawyer, Joe Morse, who protects a crime combine that runs the numbers racket in New York City. One of the smaller “banks” that run the numbers is owned by his older brother Leo (Thomas Gomez in his greatest role).

Joe and his gangster boss Tucker (Roy Roberts) come up with a scheme to bankrupt the smaller betting parlors so that everyone has to do their gambling through them. This ruthless corporate consolidation means that all the little players squeezed out, including Leo. Joe tries to get Leo to take a position in Tucker’s organization, but Leo refuses.

The scheme works, and soon the police and a rival gang come down hard on Leo. Meanwhile, it becomes apparent that Joe is being surveilled by the government. Joe packs up some cash and a gun and prepares to leave town. Meanwhile, Leo is tricked into meeting an informant at a restaurant, where a rival gang swoops in and kidnaps him, killing his bookkeeper at the same time.

Joe finds out, and rushes to Tucker’s, where he finds Tucker making a deal with the gangster that kidnapped Leo. The rival gangster Ficco reveals that Leo has been murdered and dumped under the George Washington Bridge. Joe lifts the receiver on a tapped phone, allowing the law to hear Ficco confess that his men killed Leo and the bookkeeper. A gun battle breaks out; Tucker and Ficco are killed. Joe leaves and goes to find his brother’s body, then turns himself in to the police.

There is a slight romantic plot between Joe and a young secretary, Doris, but the film is concerned with the mechanics of what is basically a hostile corporate takeover. Crooks will fix the numbers game to get their way; nothing matters but the expansion and domination of the primary criminal enterprise in the city.

Garfield is stellar as Joe, as the film tracks his disillusionment to the bitter end. Joe’s world is nasty, dark, and bristling with hidden weapons that come into play at the end of the film. Crooks are merely shadows of the ruthlessness and disregard for human feeling of the stock market. Money and the system of its distribution inherently corrupt anyone involved with it.

There is a lot of location shooting in New York; Joe’s office is close to Wall Street and the parallels between legitimate banks and numbers banks is made clear. The gangsters are after the cash flow and nothing human is factored into their machinations. Joe gets wise to himself – but too late to save his brother.

In 1951, Polonsky and Garfield were summoned before HUAC but refused to “name names” of American Communists; both were blacklisted. Garfield died of a heart attack at the age f 39 in 1952. Polonsky wrote under pseudonyms until 1959. Never again would Hollywood let someone with anti-capitalist sentiments get behind a movie camera.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: In the Street.