Themes: Haunted By the Past, Home From the War, Dangerous Friends
Main Cast: Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Phyllis Thaxter, Mary Astor, Berry Kroeger
Release Year: 1949
Country: US
Run Time: 82 minutes
Plot
An unusually disturbing noir from a director better known for more mainstream fare like High Noon and From Here to Eternity, Act of Violence focuses on a WWII veteran haunted by his past. A film that was close to the director's heart, he said that it represented "the first time that I felt confident that I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it." Van Heflin stars as Frank Enley, a contractor living a peaceful life in a small California town, when Joe Parkson, a man who served in the army with him, arrives in the area, intent on killing him. He follows Frank to a lake where he's fishing but is unable to kill him. When a lakeside bartender tells Frank that a man with a limp is looking for him, Frank is frightened, realizing why he has come. He tells his wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), that Joe is a man who spent time with in a Nazi POW camp, who is now mentally ill, and that he intends to avoid him. When Frank goes to Los Angeles for a business convention, Joe arrives at his house and tells his wife that her husband is responsible for his injury and for the deaths of a number of men. Fearing for her husband's life, Edith heads for L.A. with Joe not far behind. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Review
Arguably Zinnemann's most underrated film, this harrowing noir is a vivid evocation of survivor's guilt directed by a man who had lost much of his family in the death camps. Unlike most noirs, which open with its protagonists in desperate straits, the film derives much of its power from the contractor's gradual descent from a seemingly normal life into a perverse nightmare realm. While the highly improbable plot is a bit baroque for straight drama, and the character of Joe is less a human being than a projection of Frank's guilty conscience, the elements still mesh beautifully in the service of the film's tough-talking expressionism. In one unforgettably corrosive and spectacularly photographed sequence, Frank careens wildly through downtown L.A., ending up in a dive where he finds himself taking advice from a well-worn hooker (Mary Astor) and her hitman friend (Berry Kroeger). Heflin mixes fear, confusion, and desperation in a typically multi-layered performance, and Ryan is disturbing as the obsessive, embittered cripple, but it's Astor's rock-hard yet bizarrely compassionate prostitute than lingers in the mind. Even better is the rich chiaroscuro of Robert Surtees' camera work, in which shadows slice bodies and cover faces until, like the contractor, we no longer have the vaguest idea where we are. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Cedric Gibbons - Art Director, Hans Peters - Art Director, Helen Rose - Costume Designer, Fred Zinnemann - Director, Conrad A. Nervig - Editor, Bronislau Kaper - Composer (Music Score), Jack Dawn - Makeup, Robert Surtees - Cinematographer, William H. Wright - Producer, Henry W. Grace - Set Designer, Edwin B. Willis - Set Designer, Douglas Shearer - Sound/Sound Designer, Collier Young - Screen Story, Robert L. Richards - Screenwriter
