Genre:
Film Noir
Distributor:
Simply Media
Rating: PG
Director:
John Berry
Cast:
John Garfield, Shelley Winters, Normal Lloyd, Wallace Ford
Release: 23rd February 2015
He Ran All the Way is an interesting B-Movie noir that happened to come out at the height of the blacklist, where members of Hollywood were banned from creating films due to their political beliefs. It was also Hollywood’s first badboy John Garfield’s, final film; he would die the following year after he was blacklisted due to his ties with the Communist party. The director John Berry was soon blacklisted as well, and fled to France, with the two screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler also being blacklisted. Trumbo would later write the scripts for both Exodus and Spartacus, and when both Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger publicly declared he was the writer for their respective films the blacklist was over.
The film is a fairly rudimentary home invasion film. Garfield plays the crook, Nick Robey. After a robbery goes astray, he manages to get the money but his accomplice gets killed in the getaway. He meets a young woman Peg Dobbs (Shelley Winters) at a local gym who takes him home, and he holds up there, taking her and the rest of her family hostage. Nick becomes increasingly paranoid as the manhunt for him happens outside.
Garfield was a predecessor to what would later be known as a method actor, which James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Montgomery Clift are most identified with. He once said "if I hadn't become an actor, I might have become Public Enemy Number One." and that sums up his approach to his screen craft. He was hard as nails and he was extremely influential on Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro decades later. Garfield perfectly captures the paranoid crook on the run here but also has a wounded quality that is extremely impressive. It’s such a shame he left us so soon.
The amount of good to great work Shelley Winters did in her very long career would equal any other actor. This was one of her earlier roles and one of her first sizable roles as well, it came out the same year as her star making turn in A Place in the Sun. She captures the innocent girl who is forced to protect her family fantastically. The film is also expertly photographed by the cinematography James Wong Howe, who would later shoot such masterpieces as Hud and Seconds.
The film has enough spark and energy to impress greatly, and is extremely well paced over it’s 74 minutes. The two lead performances are fantastic and Howe shoots some fascinating shots that are very impressive, no wonder he is considered one of the best cinematographers to ever live. It seems to have been forgotten in the scheme of underrated noirs, but hopefully with this new release it will find it’s hands into a new generation of fans.
★★★★
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