''Act of Violence'' is a 1949 American
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...
starring
Van Heflin
Emmett Evan "Van" Heflin Jr. (December 13, 1908 – July 23, 1971) was an American theatre, radio and film actor. He played mostly character parts over the course of his film career, but during the 1940s had a string of roles as a leading man. H ...
,
Robert Ryan
Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor and activist. Known for his portrayals of hardened cops and ruthless villains, Ryan performed for over three decades. He was nominated for the Academy Award for ...
and featuring
Janet Leigh
Jeanette Helen Morrison (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004), known professionally as Janet Leigh, was an American actress, singer, dancer, and author. Her career spanned over five decades. Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, ...
,
Mary Astor
Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress. Although her career spanned several decades, she may be best remembered for her performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in '' The Maltese ...
and
Phyllis Thaxter
Phyllis St. Felix Thaxter (November 20, 1919 – August 14, 2012) was an American actress. She is best known for portraying Ellen Lawson in ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) and Martha Kent in ''Superman'' (1978). She also appeared in ''Bewit ...
.
Directed by
Fred Zinnemann
Alfred ''Fred'' Zinnemann (April 29, 1907 – March 14, 1997) was an Austrian Empire-born American film director. He won four Academy Awards for directing and producing films in various genres, including thrillers, westerns, film noir and play ...
and adapted for the screen by
Robert L. Richards
Robert L. Richards (March 3, 1909 - June 1984) was a film screenwriter. He attended Horace Mann School (high school) and graduated from Harvard in 1932. He worked for ''Time'' magazine and the ''March of Time'' radio program and newsreel for 7 ...
from a story by
Collier Young
Collier Hudson Young (August 19, 1908 – December 25, 1980) was an American film producer and writer, who worked on many films in the 1950s, before becoming a television producer for such shows as NBC's '' Ironside'' and CBS's '' The Wild, Wil ...
, the film confronts the ethics of war and was one of the first to address the problems of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
veterans.
Plot
After surviving a Nazi
POW camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. P ...
where comrades were murdered by guards during an escape attempt, Frank Enley is respected for his fine character and good works in the small California town of Santa Lisa, where he, his young wife and baby had settled after moving from the East. What his wife does not know is that Frank moved them in an attempt to escape the fall-out from events in that WWII prison camp.
Frank has a nemesis, Joe Parkson, once his best friend, who lived through the ordeal and was left with a crippled leg. Unable to convince Joe to not make an escape attempt, Frank had alerted the SS Nazi camp commander to the prisoners' plan, taking the camp commandant at his word that he would "go easy" on the men. The prisoners were bayonetted and left to die, and only Joe survived by playing dead. Joe is now determined to exact justice on Frank, whose location he has learned from a newspaper story commending Enley for his civic endeavors.
Joe's girlfriend, Ann Sturgess, knows everything about her man, but cannot dissuade him from his passion to right past wrongs by seeing Frank dead. Joe confronts Edith at their house and tells her the truth about Frank.
Doggedly pursued by Joe, Frank goes to a trade convention at a Los Angeles hotel. Edith shows up to hear the truth straight from her husband, before fleeing back home. Joe finds Frank and they scuffle. Frank runs through downtown Los Angeles and ends up on Skid Row, where he is picked up by Pat, who introduces him to a shady lawyer, Gavery, and a thug for hire, Johnny. A drunken Frank gives Johnny the information he needs to lure Joe into an ambush at the Santa Lisa train station.
Waking from his drunken binge, Frank regrets the deal. He goes home and tries to persuade Edith that it is all over. While she is seeing to their child, he leaves and goes to the station to warn Joe. Johnny is waiting with a gun, but as he fires, Frank jumps in front of Joe and is hit. Frank manages to grab Johnny as he speeds off in his car, causing it to crash into a lamppost, killing Johnny. Frank falls into the street near the fiery crash and dies. Joe, realizing what Frank has done, kneels by his old captain and tells the surrounding crowd that he will be the one to tell Frank's wife about her husband's death.
Cast
*
Van Heflin
Emmett Evan "Van" Heflin Jr. (December 13, 1908 – July 23, 1971) was an American theatre, radio and film actor. He played mostly character parts over the course of his film career, but during the 1940s had a string of roles as a leading man. H ...
as Frank R. Enley
*
Robert Ryan
Robert Bushnell Ryan (November 11, 1909 – July 11, 1973) was an American actor and activist. Known for his portrayals of hardened cops and ruthless villains, Ryan performed for over three decades. He was nominated for the Academy Award for ...
as Joe Parkson
*
Janet Leigh
Jeanette Helen Morrison (July 6, 1927 – October 3, 2004), known professionally as Janet Leigh, was an American actress, singer, dancer, and author. Her career spanned over five decades. Raised in Stockton, California, by working-class parents, ...
as Edith Enley
*
Mary Astor
Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress. Although her career spanned several decades, she may be best remembered for her performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in '' The Maltese ...
as Pat
*
Phyllis Thaxter
Phyllis St. Felix Thaxter (November 20, 1919 – August 14, 2012) was an American actress. She is best known for portraying Ellen Lawson in ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) and Martha Kent in ''Superman'' (1978). She also appeared in ''Bewit ...
as Ann Sturges
*
Berry Kroeger
Berry Kroeger (October 16, 1912 – January 4, 1991) was an American film, television and stage actor.
Career
Kroeger was born in San Antonio, Texas. He got his acting start on radio as an announcer on ''Suspense'' and as an actor, playing fo ...
as Johnny
*
Taylor Holmes
Taylor Holmes (May 16, 1878 – September 30, 1959) was an American actor who appeared in over 100 Broadway plays in his five-decade career. However, he is probably best remembered for his screen performances, which he began in silent films in ...
as Gavery
*
Harry Antrim
Harry Antrim (August 27, 1884 – January 18, 1967) was an American stage, film and television actor.
Biography
Antrim was born on August 27, 1884, in Chicago, Illinois. By 1906, he was working in vaudeville. During the early 1930s, he moved to ...
as Fred Finney
*
Connie Gilchrist
Rose Constance Gilchrist (July 17, 1895 – March 3, 1985) was an American stage, film, and television actress. Among her screen credits are her roles in the Hollywood productions '' Cry 'Havoc (1943), ''A Letter to Three Wives'' (1949), ' ...
as Martha Finney
*
Will Wright as Pop
Production
Principal photography on ''Act of Violence'' took place from May 17 to mid-July 1948, with added scenes shot in late August 1948. Location shooting included scenes at
Big Bear Lake
Big Bear Lake is a reservoir in the San Bernardino Mountains, in San Bernardino County, California, United States. It is a snow and rain fed lake, having no other means of tributaries or mechanical replenishment. At a surface elevation of , it ...
and the
San Bernardino National Forest
The San Bernardino National Forest is a United States National Forest in Southern California encompassing of which are federal. The forest is made up of two main divisions, the eastern portion of the San Gabriel Mountains and the San Bernard ...
, California, accompanied by filming at the
MGM Studios
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
in Culver City. Some of the nighttime city scenes were shot in the slum neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
Originally adapted from unpublished story by Collier Young, before he embarked on a career as an independent producer with his future wife
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino (4 February 1918Recorded in ''Births Mar 1918'' Camberwell Vol. 1d, p. 1019 (Free BMD). Transcribed as "Lupine" in the official births index – 3 August 1995) was an English-American actress, singer, director, writer, and producer. T ...
, the film was intended to be a small, independent film.
Howard Duff
Howard is an English-language given name originating from Old French Huard (or Houard) from a Germanic source similar to Old High German ''*Hugihard'' "heart-brave", or ''*Hoh-ward'', literally "high defender; chief guardian". It is also probabl ...
was to be the star, but when MGM picked up the rights,
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor and one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck the 12th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood ...
was to be paired with
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (; December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957), nicknamed Bogie, was an American film and stage actor. His performances in Classical Hollywood cinema films made him an American cultural icon. In 1999, the American Film In ...
in the leading roles. Robert Ryan was lent to MGM by
RKO Pictures
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orphe ...
for the production. ''Act of Violence'' was the third film made by Ryan in 1948, following ''
Berlin Express
''Berlin Express'' is a 1948 American drama film starring Robert Ryan, Merle Oberon and Paul Lukas, and directed by Jacques Tourneur.
Thrown together by chance, a group of people search a city for a kidnapped peace activist. Set in Allied-occupi ...
'' and ''
Return of the Badmen''.
Director Fred Zinnemann said that ''Act of Violence'' was the first film in which he felt he had full control of all the aspects of film-making.
Reception
According to MGM records, ''Act of Violence'' earned $703,000 in the US and Canada and $426,000 overseas, resulting in a loss of $637,000.
Critical response
Bosley Crowther
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his ...
, reviewing the film for ''The New York Times'', emphasized that it was a director's "tour de force. For this latter asset of the picture, we have Mr. Zinnemann to thank. He has pictured, at least, a visual setting for terror and violence and he has kept the pursued and the pursuer going at a grueling pace. In the former role, Van Heflin strains and sweats impressively. As his relentless pursuer, Robert Ryan is infernally taut. Mr. Zinnemann has also extracted a tortured performance from Janet Leigh as the fearful, confused and disillusioned wife of the hunted man and he has got squalid portraits of scoundrels from Mary Astor, Berry Kroeger and Taylor Holmes."
''Variety'' gave ''Act of Violence'' a positive review, writing "The grim melodrama implied by its title is fully displayed in ''Act of Violence''...tellingly produced and played to develop tight excitement...The playing and direction catch plot aims and the characterizations are all topflight thesping. Heflin and Ryan deliver punchy performances that give substance to the menacing terror...It's grim business, unrelieved by lightness, and the players belt over their assignments under Zinnemann's knowing direction. Janet Leigh points up her role as Heflin's worried but courageous wife, while Phyllis Thaxter does well by a smaller part as Ryan's girl. A standout is the brassy, blowzy femme created by Mary Astora woman of the streets who gives Heflin shelter during his wild flight from fate."
Film reviewer Roger Westcombe, writing for the ''Big House Film Society'', considers ''Act of Violence'' unsettling, and wrote "''Act of Violence''...with a profundity, through its unsettling moral continuum, redolent not of Hollywood simplicities of good/evil but of the art one associates with Zinnemann's European background. This contains a clue. Fred and his brother escaped their native Austria in 1938, but their parents, waiting for U.S. visas that never came, perishedseparatelyin concentration camps. The '
survivor guilt
Survivor guilt (or survivor's guilt; also called survivor syndrome or survivor's syndrome and survivor disorder or survivor's disorder) is a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumati ...
' this awful closing engendered must resemble the emotional see-saw ride which fiction like the ethical pendulum of ''Act of Violence'' can only start to expiate."
Currently, it holds a 90% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 10 reviews.
Awards and honors
Fred Zinnemann was nominated for the Grand Prize of the Festival at the
1949 Cannes Film Festival
The 3rd Cannes Film Festival was held from 2 to 17 September 1949 in film, 1949. The previous year, no festival had been held because of financial problems.
Like in 1947, the entire jury for this festival was made up of French persons, with histo ...
for his work on ''Act of Violence''.
["Festival de Cannes: 'Act of Violence'."](_blank)
''festival-cannes.com''. Retrieved: May 7, 2016.
References
Further reading
* Jarlett, Franklin (1997) ''Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. .
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Act Of Violence
1949 films
1949 crime drama films
American black-and-white films
American chase films
American crime drama films
Film noir
American films about revenge
Films directed by Fred Zinnemann
Films scored by Bronisław Kaper
Films set in California
Films shot in Big Bear Lake, California
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
1940s chase films
1940s English-language films
1940s American films