Force of Evil (1948)

****SPOILERS**** John Garfield as big time mob lawyer Joe Morse at his best in a Cain and Able like story about the numbers racket in New York City. Where his brother Leo, Thomas Gomez, has a small neighborhood numbers bank that gets wiped out on July 4th when the number 776 which was heavily bet comes out not by chance but by design. In a fix engineered by Joe's mobster client Ben Tucker, Roy Roberts, in an attempt to corner and take over the numbers business in the city.

Joe being helpless to get Leo out of the numbers business before 776 hit because of a combination of Leo's honesty to pay off those who played the number at his establishment. Joe's affiliation with Tucker made it impossible for him to tell Leo the real reason for him to close up on July 4th without reviling Tucker's criminal activities. On the evening of July 4th all hell breaks loose with all the small numbers banks all over the city going bust by not being able to pay off those thousands who played number 776.

Joe trying to get Leo back on his feet by getting him a job with the Tucker mob sees that Leo would rather be broke then be involved with organized crime. Leo cares more about the people who worked for him, who ended up broke and in jail, then himself making a lot more then he did when he was a small time numbers banker. With Leo wanting out of the business before he corrupts himself by working for the mob he's kidnapped by the Ficco gang, Tucker's muscle men. Leo's accountant Freddie Bauer, Howard Chamberlain, is later murdered because not only didn't want out like Leo but could identify those who kidnapped Leo as well.

Joe drunk and depressed, over what is happening to Leo, at a local nightclub with Leo's secretary Doris Lowry, Beatrice Pearson, sees the news of Leo's kidnapping and Bauer's murder in the newspaper and rushes to Tucker's office. Finding Tucker there with his gangster partner Bill Ficco, Paul Fix, Joe tries to get his brother Leo released by the Ficco mob. It's then that Joe finds out that Leo died of a heart attack and was dumped on the rocks under the Washington Bridge.

In an explosive and emotional moment Joe secretly lifts up a phone in Tucker's cabinet drawer, that Joe knows is being tapped by the DA's office. Joe knowing that it's all over between him and Tucker gets, by inciting, both him and Ficco to spill the beans about their criminal operations, as well as Ficco's kidnapping and later death of Leo. When Tucker and Ficco are shown the activated phone by Joe the lights go out and there's a shootout where both Tucker and Ficco end up getting shot and killed by Joe. Taking off with Doris to the Washington Bridge Joe find Leo's body lying on the rocks.

Sad and emotional ending with Joe and Doris finding Leo's body and later, as the movie ends, Joe going to the DA to tell all he knows about the life of crime that he led defending hoods like Tucker that cost Leo's life. Both powerful and touching movie about good and evil that was so ahead of it's time in how the force of evil destroys the lives of those who embrace it. That even now almost sixty years after it's release "Force of Evil" still packs the same wallop as it did back in 1948.

Fmovies: McCarthy blacklist victim Abraham Polonsky's angry and poetic film noir is perhaps the most candidly subversive picture ever made in a commercial genre, almost explicitly equating capitalism with crime in the metaphor of the numbers racket. It belongs on the face of it to the post-war-disillusionment school of American thrillers (eg The Blue Dahlia, Key Largo), in which the evils that ordinary Joes spent the war fighting turn out to be business as usual when they get back home. But what makes it so unusual is its insistence, contrary to the message of other social-comment crime thrillers of the 1940s, that it's a bad system, rather than bad people, that's to blame for the woes of the world. The fate of Mob lawyer John Garfield's decent, kind-hearted brother Thomas Gomez, a small-time policy banker, shows us what happens to good people who try to play straight in a crooked game. If the bad guys in the film turned good, Polonsky implies, they'd only get the same. Polonsky described the source novel, Tucker's People, as "an autopsy on capitalism".

Sermon over: none of the above gets in the way of a raging, doom-laden crime melo that, like a snowball, gets faster and weightier as it barrels along. Superb New York location photography, a vitriolic script, and committed, sincere performances lock our attention to every second of its 81 New York minutes. If it weren't for Gun Crazy (scripted under a front name by another dangerous pinko, Dalton Trumbo), Force of Evil would be the best film noir ever made.

FORCE OF EVIL has remained hovering over me like a ghost all these years. I was studying at Manhattan's Grand Street Playhouse at the time, and the political climate that was beginning to engulf the public had started. Polonsky barely hid the real undercurrent of this remarkable film. When it finally hit the VHS bins, I was almost first on line. I agree with all of the positive remarks on this strong movie, that has all kinds of ghostly memories hovering over it. I did indeed develop a strong crush on Beatrice Pearson, who was an established Broadway actress. She later did quite a turnaround, and even more effective role in LOST BOUNDARIES with excellent work alongside Mel Ferrer, Susan Douglas, Richard Hylton and Carleton Carpenter. From what I have read (if it is to be believed), she was difficult with a friend around offering advice at every turn. Pearson, after BOUNDARIES, returned to Broadway. Wherever she is now may be a mystery, but if she ever reads this, I hope she knows that this is one fan who still smiles at thoughts of her hair falling over the side of her face, her lovely smile, and the sight of her sitting atop a high hall mantle.

Force of Evil fmovies. This movie is about the "numbers" racket that existed at the time the movie was made. Younger viewers, familiar with state lotteries may not appreciate the pervasive influence that was required to operate a nickel and dime play of individuals, that translated into millions that went to corrupt local politicians, judges, and police. One reviewer said the crime was petty which is true; but that makes the cost to the characters involved so tragic and cinematcally vivid. John Garfield acting is at its best as he portrays a person trying to balance ambition, romance and family loyalty. The minor characters are all nice people who found themselves caught in a dirty business that seemed harmless to everyone who played the numbers. This movie shows the real cost in personal terms. The writing, acting and direction of this movie excels any crime movie of this generation.

The VHS version I own of Force of Evil is one with a forward by Martin Scorsese. In it Scorsese says that this film was the first one that depicted a world he knew, growing up in New York City. Scorses was mesmerized by it as a kid and studied it frame by frame as when he grew up. He pays tribute to Force of Evil saying that you can see the influence of it Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas.

Of course the fact that the film was shot totally on location in scintillating black and white noir in New York City, gave it a dimension that no other noir films have, save possibly Night and the City which was also shot on location in London.

John Garfield who was as quintessential a New Yorker as you could get plays Joe Morse, smooth lawyer for a big time racketeer Roy Roberts who is looking to either take over or muscle out the small time policy banks in the numbers racket. One of those banks is owned by Garfield's brother, Thomas Gomez.

Garfield is as ruthless as Roberts, but with a velvet glove. He tries to get Gomez to go along with the syndicate, but Gomez balks. There's also a prosecutor looking into the numbers racket and a tapped phone which figures prominently in the climax.

Given the leftwing polemics of both the star and director Abraham Polonsky, Force of Evil got the attention of the ultra rightwing House Un American Activities Committee. Polonsky was blacklisted for over 20 years and Garfield died under the strain of the investigation.

Given what has happened to the Soviet Union, I wonder if Garfield and Polonsky were alive today what they would say and how they would feel about their work here. It's interesting to speculate.

But as entertainment Force of Evil is a great success and that is the first rule of film. Also look for a good performance by Marie Windsor as Roberts's wife with a yen for Garfield. One of her first femme fatale roles and one of her best.

This is a change of pace from the norm of film noir. Film noir of course is a varied group of films and there is no one way to do it, certainly not a right one. It was tracing illusory and disorienting existence in the big city after all, itself fluid and malleable, and that's what we get here.

But a few differences help cast a light on what this is:

• the protagonist is not a gumshoe unraveling a case or hapless schmuck crushed by the fates. He's a cocky narrator, as much in control of what happens as anyone else, and in on it from the start. He has the usual fast-talking bravado, he glides smoothly, sweeps the girl off her feet. And yet his real impetus is wanting to pay back a big brother who sacrificed to get him out of tenement life.

• the girl is not some world-savvy dame but a sweet, innocent soul who instinctively backs out of the racket when it starts to feel wrong and is ready to fall for him only tentatively, guarding herself as she gives way.

All through this New York looks gritty rather than sultry, the narrative light is harsh and anxious. The contrast is between not entirely legal but not entirely immoral slum life, and the new cut-throat world of big business coming for the little guy. It's a bit of stretch to show the smalltime hustlers as the personable 'good guys' but that's the short-hand used. Its real progenitors are gangster films.

• And third, there is a scheme underway that resolves all this, to turn a numbers racket run piecemeal from tenement backrooms into a respectable, lucrative business run from Wall Street.

There's a lot of talk throughout, in that rat-tat-tat fashion of Hollywood. The dialogue verges on histrionic, and the whole has a verbose feel, but one that feels like someone has studied this life and is trying to come back with an honest depiction. It has a thickness of world to it, although the mannerisms are obvious.

Here's the cinch and what probably earned the movie a reputation as left-wing and landed the filmmaker in the famous HUAC blacklist.

The scheme works, the older brother eventually goes along with it, who had earlier made a big moral stand against it. The girl is swept off her feet. Our guy stands to make a fortune, help his brother, and get the girl who is not a dame like his boss's wife.

Except, in unchecked capitalism no one is really in control. Police had been watching but it's the nerve-wracked bookkeeper who sets the scene for grievous consequences to follow. The moral resolution is that it works but at what price to the soul; the lesson remains that a life of scheming doesn't pay and I'm not bowled over in this case.

Even more pertinently however, were the smalltime hustlers a boon to their community? They were running much the same lottery, working peoples' money for the promise that maybe this week it'll be you. But it seems there were bonds of community which the merger frays and disturbs. You'll see that it's our hero's tie to a human story rooted in community that really foils the plan.

The evocative finale with the couple descending stairs with the Brooklyn Bridge hulking above them is a favorite. In fact my favorite bits here all revolve around these two and their unlikely bond, their playful interplay against the larger background.