Classic Films in Focus: BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955)

There's more than one bad day being referenced in the title, but Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) mostly focuses on the deadly 24 hours spent by Spencer Tracy's war veteran protagonist in a dusty little town that definitely doesn't want him there. It's a searing and sadly still relevant indictment of prejudice, small town corruption, and the way cowardice prevents ostensibly good people from doing what they know to be right. John Sturges, known for his Westerns and war films, directs this taut noir in a modern Western setting, and Tracy leads a cast of outstanding performers, with Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, Lee Marvin, and Anne Francis all doing excellent work. 

Tracy plays WWII veteran John Macreedy, who lost an arm in Italy and arrives in Black Rock to present a medal to the father of the Japanese-American soldier who died saving his life. Denizens of the town are immediately suspicious of Macreedy, and their mood sours to outright hostility when they learn why he has come, with local boss Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) encouraging his henchmen, Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin), to bait Macreedy at every turn. Macreedy soon realizes that Smith and his lackeys are behind the mysterious disappearance of the Japanese farmer, Komoko, but they don't intend to let Macreedy live long enough to tell the state police about their crimes.

Each character in this story represents a possible response to injustice, with Tracy's disabled veteran as our moral example and Ryan's seething racist at the other extreme. Macreedy, wanting to honor the memory of his fallen comrade and perhaps assuage his survivor's guilt, never wavers in his commitment to seeing justice done, even though it could mean his own death. He isn't temperamental or easy to bully into foolish action, which makes him particularly dangerous to the volatile, tyrannical Smith, who recognizes him as the inexorable force of justice personified. Smith puts on a friendly face at first, but it's merely a calculating facade. His need to rule over his neighbors and his vicious hatred of Japanese people soon become obvious. Coley and Hector eagerly abet Smith's reign, if only because it gives them scope to exercise their own sadistic natures and probably line their pockets at the same time. Young Pete (John Ericson) and his sister, Liz (Anne Francis), both express ambivalence at first, but each of them must eventually choose a side, and their starkly different decisions determine their fates. Good intentions and cowardice mark the characters of Doc Velie (Walter Brennan) and Sheriff Tim Horn (Dean Jagger), older men who don't condone Smith's crimes but seem unable to stand up to him until Macreedy shows them how it's done. It's worthwhile to note that Liz is the only female character we see in the entire town until the very last scene, as if Black Rock women have to stay in hiding as long as Smith's gang holds absolute sway. Black Rock is no place for them or children, either, because no one is safe as long as a ruthless tyrant rules the town.

American movies often romanticize small town life, but Bad Day at Black Rock picks up that rock to examine the venomous insects scurrying underneath. Four years before Macreedy's arrival, those insects swarmed out to murder the innocent Komoko just for being Japanese, even as his son fought for their collective freedom overseas. That was a bad day, too, but Black Rock is a place made for bad days, as Macreedy soon discovers. Small towns are prone to group think, susceptible to strong man predators, and often solipsistic in their worldviews, as they have trouble imagining that other places and people exist, much less matter. Macreedy says that he doesn't think there are a lot of towns like Black Rock in America, but the viewer ought to know better. Bad Day at Black Rock recreates World World II and the fight against the Nazi regime in a hot desert microcosm, warning us that cruelty, prejudice, cowardice, and apathy are not just problems "then" or "over there" but also, always, here and now. There's always another Reno Smith and plenty of Hectors and Coleys ready to enforce his will for their own gratification. There are plenty of "stay out of it" types, too, and those who disapprove but only wring their hands because they're afraid of incurring the bully's wrath. In the movie, Macreedy arrives on the train to save the town from itself, like a roving samurai, a lone gunfighter, or even a middle-aged, one-armed superhero, but that's the part of the story we can't depend on in real life. There's no guarantee that the train will ever stop, or that the hero we're waiting for will be on it if it does. If you have to pick a character to be in Bad Day at Black Rock (and you do), be Macreedy, and don't wait for him to be someone else.

Bad Day at Black Rock earned three Oscar nominations, including nods for Sturges and Tracy and a Best Screenplay nomination for Millard Kaufman, who adapted the story from Howard Breslin's 1947 short story, "Bad Time at Honda." Sturges' other films include Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and The Great Escape (1963), all of them terrific pictures. For a thematic Spencer Tracy double feature, pair Bad Day at Black Rock with Fury (1936) or Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Robert Ryan, often cast as a heavy in noir and Western films, also plays a prejudiced killer in Crossfire (1947), but to see him as the good guy catch The Set-Up (1949). Unlike their characters in the film, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine all served in the military during WWII. For more films about the dark side of American small towns, try Kings Row (1942), Storm Warning (1950), or Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

 

The Brave New World of FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)

This post is part of the CMBA Blogathon: Fabulous Films of the 50s. Visit the Classic Movie Blog Association's website for links to all of the participating blogs!

The 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet is like one of those desserts that secretly has spinach or wheat germ in it. On the surface, it's a wildly imaginative influential genre landmark with cool robots, a scary monster, and a hot young Anne Francis in some very short dresses. It's also, however, a thoughtful Freudian revision of Shakespeare's The Tempest in which science and magic become different terms for the same concepts and the nature of monstrosity is internalized to depict the ways in which ambitious people become corrupted by their own power. It's this dual nature of the film that makes it such an enduring classic as well as one of my all-time favorite movies.

Granted, Forbidden Planet gets off to a bit of a slow start, but once it picks up it really keeps going. We have Leslie Nielsen looking serious and heroic as Commander Adams when his team starts turning up dead, killed by the same mysterious creature that wiped out the previous colonists. We get Walter Pidgeon gloriously sombre as the brilliant scientist, Dr. Morbius, and Anne Francis embodying the very definition of pulchritude as his daughter, Altaira. Best of all, we have Robby the Robot, a walking, talking vision of the future as only the 1950s could imagine it. What's not to love?

Now, the sneaky Shakespearean content begins to appear. In The Tempest, the powerful sorcerer Prospero and his daughter Miranda are trapped on a remote island, much like Morbius and Altaira. In both tales a ship arrives, filled with puzzled newcomers, and one of them rapidly develops a passion for the sheltered girl. Prospero's helpful spirit, Ariel, is recast as the docile but remarkable Robby, while the dangerous monster Caliban is transformed into the planet's invisible lurking evil.

Forbidden Planet gives a Freudian twist to the narrative by making its monster an uncontrolled embodiment of the id, the dark, brutish part of Morbius that the scientist thinks he has banished by his experiments with advanced alien technology. As it turns out, Morbius has only accomplished a Jekyll and Hyde kind of separation of the higher and lower parts of his nature; without the yoke of his rational and ethical thoughts, the id runs amok. This, too, has its roots in Shakespeare. Near the end of the play, Prospero says of Caliban, "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine," and that acknowledgement is precisely what is required of Morbius in order to save his daughter and Commander Adams' remaining men.

While the movie had a profound influence on later science fiction with its visual effects and its iconic robot, Forbidden Planet also shows the depth and breadth of Shakespeare's legacy. That's an impressive one-two punch, to do something radically new that changes a whole genre while still reveling in the ability of something old to have relevance and meaning. It's a movie for science fiction fans and for Shakespeare fans. English majors and engineers can reach across the table and shake hands over a film like this one. I like to think that, in the long run, Forbidden Planet helped to make science fiction smarter, deeper, and more conscious of its literary nature as well as its science. O brave new world, that has such movies in it!

By the way, if you're a fan of Shakespeare and Forbidden Planet, be sure to have a look at the hilarious stage musical, Return to the Forbidden Planet. I had the good fortune to see it performed by the American Shakespeare Center several years ago, but you can find videos from various performances of it on YouTube.


PS -

Forbidden Planet and The Tempest are also the underlying influences in my short story, "This is Not a Life," which you'll find on Amazon.com. It helps if you know something about Magritte, too.