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The Politics of Force of Evil: An Analysis of Abraham Polonsky's Preblacklist Film

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Christine Noll Brinckmann
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Extract

Force of evil was the first film Abraham Polonsky directed, and it is not without structural flaws. It is, however, a rare work of art in that it is poetical, popular, and political at the same time. Unlike other political art in which the balance between message and aesthetic form is usually uneven and the difficulties the artist had in creating an imaginative framework around his or her statement can be felt throughout, Force of Evil shows no seams. Although revealing the corruption of the capitalist system, the information it gives cannot be subtracted from its fictional, emotional impact, and although its effect on the viewer is agitational, there is no proposition for practical action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 6 , October 1981 , pp. 357 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

NOTES

1. As Dorothy B.Jones's study on “Communism and the Movies” has shown, it was practically impossible to smuggle Marxist ideas into movies produced by the big studios: “The very nature of the film-making process which divides creative responsibility among a number of different people and which keeps ultimate control of content in the hands of top studio executives; the habitual caution of moviemakers with respect to film content; and the self-regulating practices of the motion picture industry as carried on by the Motion Picture Association, prevented such propaganda from reaching the screen in all but possibly rare instances.” “Communism and the Movies: A Study of Film Content,” in Cogley, John, Report on Blacklisting I: The Movies (Fund for the Republic, 1956), p. 197Google Scholar. For Polonsky's views on the problematic, see especially his article in Film Culture 50–51 (Fall-Winter 1970), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

2. See Polonsky's interview with J. D. Pasternak and F. W. Howton, especially pp. 22 ff., in Henderson, Ron, ed., The Image Maker (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1971).Google Scholar

3. See the recently published Salt of the Earth-Book, which contains Michael Wilson's screenplay and an extensive commentary on the background and making of the film by Deborah Silverton Rosenfelt (New York: Feminist Press, 1978).

4. For a more thorough analysis of the economic situation of Hollywood in the 1940s, see Sklar, Robert, Movie-made America (New York: Vintage, 1976), Part 4.Google Scholar

5. Clayton M. Steinman has compiled a short history of Enterprise Productions in his dissertation, “Hollywood Dialectic: ‘Force of Evil’ and the Frankfurt School's Critique of the Culture Industry,” New York University, 1979, pp. 268–82.Google Scholar

6. See Polonsky's interviews with Pasternak, and Howton, , pp. 21–23Google Scholar, and with William Pechter, in Sarris, Andrew, ed., Hollywood Voices: Interviews with Film Directors (New York: Avon, 1976) pp. 390–91.Google Scholar

7. For Polonsky's biography, see Talbot, David and Zheutlin, Barbara, Creative Differences: Profiles of Hollywood Dissidents (Boston: South End Press, 1978), pp. 55–56Google Scholar, and the interview with Pechter, p. 389.

8. See Talbot, and Zheutlin, , Creative Differences, pp. 66–67.Google Scholar

9. See Polonsky's introduction to Gelman, Howard, The Films of John Garfield (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1975), p. 8.Google Scholar

10. See the interview with Pechter, , pp. 391–92.Google Scholar

11. See Polonsky's interview with Cook, Jim and Canham, Kingsley in Screen 2 (Fall 1970). pp. 68–70Google Scholar. Tucker's People was published in 1943 (New York: Popular Library).

12. Still interested in his early work, Polonsky has been one of his own most acute critics. He is generous in granting interviews and answering questions, and all the interviews published abound with valuable bits of information, aphorisms, and sympathetic and critical insights on the merits and failures of Force of Evil. Polonsky was kind enough to see me in April 1979, and I also have a letter he wrote to me, answering a number of questions I submitted to him.

13. Promotion materials (issued in 1949; filed at Lincoln Center Library) characterized Force of Evil with the following slogans: “Sensational story of a numbers king whose number was up!” “He wouldn't live within the law – or without love.” “He challenged the underworld and busted the numbers game wide open.” “He fought with the woman he loved and made love to the woman he hated.”

At the same time, the publicity experts advised exhibitors not to stress the controversial contents of the film:

When you exploit Force of Evil, don't take a controversial attitude on the perils of local gambling. Don't crusade for better local conditions or improvements, unless such a drive is already underway at the time of your play dates; then play safe and merely cash-in with picture tie-ins. Spearheading such a drive, or participating aggressively, might have unpleasant repercussions for your theater. You can, however, institute a campaign for citywide endorsement of your engagement by enlisting the support of influential people.

The pressbook also suggests valuable promotion ideas:

CRIME DOESN'T PAY. Force of Evil is a thriller-diller example of the fact that crime doesn't pay; so seize every opportunity to bring it to the attention of the public – at sports events, in bowling alleys and pool-rooms, recreation centers, with spot announcements at end of radio crime programs &c.

And:

STOP THESE MEN! Prepare 40×60 lobby board containing tough-looking heads of John Garfield and other male members of the cast, under above headline and describe under each head the manner in which that person is a “menace” to society. Finish up with picture billing and play date announcement. Strong stuff for patrons who like their pictures hard-boiled and exciting.

14. Crowther, Bosley, New York Times, 12 27, 1948Google Scholar, called the film “a dynamic crime-and-punishment drama, brilliantly and broadly realized … a sizzling piece of work,” and he considered Polonsky “a real new talent in the medium … a man of imagination and unquestioned craftsmanship.” Perhaps the first critic to recognize the genuinely political implications of Force of Evil was the British director Anderson, Lindsay in “Last Sequence of On the Waterfront,”Sight and Sound (03 1955), p. 130.Google Scholar

15. See Bentley, Eric, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968 (New York: Viking Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Other materials on HUAC and Hollywood blacklisting include Kahn, Gordon, Hollywood on Trial (New York: Boni & Gaer, 1948)Google Scholar; Cogley, , Report on Blacklisting (note 1 above)Google Scholar; and the special double issue of Film Culture on Hollywood blacklisting, Nos. 50–51 (Fall and Winter 1970).

16. In Film Culture, Nos. 50–51, Polonsky gives his reasons for not disclosing which films he wrote during the blacklist period:

It might not be damaging today to name the films I worked on during this blacklist period, but I think it's up to the persons who lent their real names to this purpose to name the films, not me. I don't see why they should do so. There would probably not be any harm, except to them personally perhaps. I mean, it's a very difficult thing to be a writer who's writing, and occasionally someone else writes something but your name is on it. That's the greatest sacrifice you can demand of a friend. And to say later, “I want to distinguish between this and that” seems to be absurd, because I don't think there are any great major works of art now going under false pretenses.

But perhaps as history the exact credits are important. If the situation were reversed, I don't know what I would do. I wouldn't do anything, I guess, unless I felt it was a bad thing that I was keeping something from someone, but that's because I'm an old Puritan. But in general I don't think the inaccuracies of these credits, due to the blacklisting, is a bad thing. I think it's better to let the past be the way it is. And instead let us writers make our usual claims that we wrote all the good pictures and everyone else wrote all the bad ones. In that way the guerrilla warfare continues, [p. 42]

17. Naturally, Polonsky had commented widely on his blacklisting experiences. His most detailed accounts to date are the interview with Cook and Canham in Screen and the Film Culture article, both 1970.

18. See Polonsky, in Film Culture, p. 45.Google Scholar

19. See note 1 above.

20. See Polonsky's interview with Sherman, Eric in Sherman, Eric and Rubin, Martin, The Director's Event: Interviews with Five American Filmmakers (New York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 20.Google Scholar

21. For a perceptive description of film noir style, see Place, J. A. and Peterson, L. S., “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir,” Film Comment 10 (01–02 1974).Google Scholar

22. Interview with Pechter (note 6 above), p. 391.

23. Garfield's personality and career have been described by Gelman, Howard, The Films of John GarfieldGoogle Scholar (note 9 above), with an introduction by Abraham Polonsky (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1975), and by Morris, George, John Garfield (New York: Jove, 1977).Google Scholar

24. Polonsky, Abraham, “‘Odd Man Out’ and ‘Monsieur Verdoux,’” Hollywood Quarterly 2 (07 1947), p. 403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Interview with Sherman, p. 22.

26. Ibid., p. 14.

27. Force of Evil is, however, not the only film of the period to be filmed on authentic locations. During World War II many Hollywood filmmakers had been involved in combat photography or the production of training films and other documentary materials. After the war some of them tried to apply documentary effects and techniques to feature films as well.

28. Like many features of Force of Evil, this goes back to the novel it was adapted from, Tucker's People. The novel is, however, set in Harlem, adding another problematic to its analysis of capitalism.

29. Shadoian, Jack, Dreams and Dead Ends: The American Gangster/Crime Film (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977)Google Scholar, points out that the word “business” plays a similar role in Force of Evil: “Business is the American way of life, and because it is ingrained, legal, and philosophically supportable, its destructiveness remains unnoticed until an analysis is made of it” (pp. 138–39).

30. Shadoian, , Dreams and Dead Ends, p. 134.Google Scholar

31. Solomon, Stanley J., Beyond Formula: American Film Genres (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 178.Google Scholar

32. Warshow, Robert, The Immediate Experience (New York: Atheneum, 1972), pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., p. 132.

34. Other gangster films of the time also tend to move away from Warshow's pattern. But instead of evoking it as Force of Evil does, they drop it altogether in favor of a different type of story and a different hero personality. In pictures like Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947)Google Scholar, They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)Google Scholar, or Side Street (Anthony Mann, 1949)Google Scholar, the protagonist is a simple, basically innocent young man who got involved in crime only because he was too weak to extricate himself from bad influences or to resist the temptation of the moment.

35. Henderson, , Image Makers (note 2 above), pp. 25–26.Google Scholar

36. Interview with Sherman (note 20 above), p. 12.

37. Ibid., p. 14.

38. See ibid., p. 19.

39. See Polonsky's interview in Henderson, , Image Makers, p. 27.Google Scholar

40. In a paper delivered at the College Art Association National Conference in 1976, “Le Film Noir: The Political Space of America in the Cold War,” Paul S. Arthur analyzed the relationship of film noir claustrophobia and other visual motifs with the political climate of the period.

41. See Polonsky's comments in Film Culture Nos. 50–51 (note 15 above), pp. 44–45.Google Scholar

42. Lesser, Simon O., in Fiction and the Unconscious (New York: Vintage, 1957)Google Scholar, holds that it is one of the major functions of form to relieve free-floating anxiety: “The highest achievements of form, it may be conjectured, are due to the double requirement of having to subdue the quotient of anxiety which is always with us as well as the anxiety which may be aroused by the subject matter of a particular story” (p. 129). Through our positive response to form, “we are paying homage to the superego, not simply attempting to deceive or conciliate it, but asseverating our devotion and our unqualified acceptance of its demands” (p. 130).

43. Polonsky, Introduction to The Films of John Garfield (note 9 above), p. 8.Google Scholar

44. Talbot, and Zheutlin, , Creative Differences (note 7 above), p. 81.Google Scholar

45. Polonsky, Abraham, “‘The Best Years of Our Lives’: A Review,” Hollywood Quarterly 2 (1946–1947), 258–59.Google Scholar

46. Whether Polonsky's political strategies in Force of Evil can be considered to constitute a Marxist film aesthetics I do not know. It is a question raised in one way or another by most of his critics and interviewers. Polonsky himself has commented on what the attitude of the Hollywood left was in respect to a Marxist aesthetics:

Their attitudes (about film) reflected — to a certain extent — what was going on in the Soviet Union, which had destroyed the dynamic aesthetic movement of its late 1920s. So they thought of aesthetics in terms of social content. To them, the social content of a film was its aesthetic. If the Party line of progressive social ideas or progressive subjects were treated in a film — that was communist aesthetics. [Talbot, and Zheutlin, . Creative Differences, p. 83]Google Scholar

Polonsky clearly dissociates himself from this attitude, and justly so, as I hope to have demonstrated.

47. Letter from Polonsky to author, dated March 7, 1979.

48. In his interview with Sherman (note 20 above), Polonsky attempted to explain the ending in a slightly different way:

… It was partly a cop-out. It was saying to the censor, “Look. It's O.K. Don't worry about it. He had a change of heart.” But that was completely on the surface. I didn't mean it at all. What I really meant were all those words at the end and all those images:

“Down, down, down.”

At the end of the picture, in Garfield's case, it's like being left back in school. I remember in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, when he talks about Hans Castorp's youth. Hans is in school, and he gets left back – and what a relief it was to get left back! Because then you don't have to get ahead anymore. A kind of liberation and freedom comes from failure. What I tried to do there was to get the feeling of that, having reached the absolute moral bottom of commitment, there's nothing left to do but commit yourself. There's no longer a problem of identity when you have no identity left at all. So, in your very next step, you must become something.

49. Variety, 12 24, 1948 (signed “Brog”).Google Scholar