The MGM video people are evil. Maybe not all of them, but certainly enough to incur my wrath. So they release John Sturges's 1955 film in a pleasant "Vintage Classics" video edition and since I don't think it's gotten a DVD release, that's how I watched it. Before the film, you get the original trailer, which is always nice. And the trailer is in nifty widescreen, showing the amazing cinematography by William Mellor (the brilliant DP of, among other great films, A Place In The Sun). Then the movie comes on at the morons at Sony pan-and-scanned it. It continues to sadden me that people honestly believe they're seeing a movie when they watch it in full-screen. Sure, there are lots of soundstage films from Hollywood's Golden Age that don't require letterboxing and the proper aspect ratio that those black stripes imply. But for a film like Bad Day At Black Rock (which was filmed in CinemaScope for Pete's sake... You can't pan and scan CinemaScope unless you're affiliated with the Devil) it's just a crime. It's especially offensive since you can tell from the print, that they obviously went to a lot of trouble to make a good transfer of this film for this video release. The colors are excellent and give some indication of what the movie should look like, but it's never really right. If you watched this version of the movie, you'd be totally convinced that John Sturges's style basically revolved around tight close-ups and then medium shots where he pans back and forth between characters talking. It's a minor disaster, really, especially if you know Sturges's other films including such classics as The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Bad Day At Black Rock earned Sturges his only Oscar nomination, but watching the fullscreen version, you'd have no idea why.

Fortunately, Bad Day At Black Rock has a great story, so that carries the day. Also, at 80 minutes with a speedy style, by the time you get truly angry with MGM for abusing their greatest resource — their film library — the movie's over.

Bad Day At Black Rock begins with swooping shots of a train speeding across the California desert, a harsh clime where the brown of the parched soil is broken only by mammoth outcropping of mountains. The train doesn't stop because there's nowhere *to* stop. Until it gets to the small town of Black Rock. But even that's unusual, since apparently the train, the Streamliner, has never stopped in Black Rock before. And naturally the residents of the town are suspicious. They don't trust strangers in general and they're especially perplexed by the man who gets off the train — the man, Macreedy (Spencer Tracey) is wearing a black suit, a fedora, and he seems to have only one arm (the character certainly seems to have only one arm, Tracey seems to just have his hand in his coat pocket). There appear to be only nine or ten residents in town, but they all appear to be hiding something and they're made especially antsy when Macreedy says he he's looking for a Japanese farmer named Komoko. Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) who seems to run the town assures Macreedy that Komoko just up and left right after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, was sent off to a rellocation camp. But when Macreedy goes out to visit Komoko's farm, he finds the house has been burnt down. What happened to Komoko and who in town was responsible for his disappearance? Or, to put it more bluntly, who in town *wasn't* responsible for his disappearance? There's kindly Doc (Walter Brennan), taunting meanies Hector and Coley (Lee Marvin and Earnest Borgnine), Peter Wirth (John Ericson) and his sister Liz (Honey West herself, Anne Francis), nominal sheriff Tim Horn (Dean Jagger) and a couple less interesting people. None of the men look like they've shaved on bathed for weeks. The whole town looks like it's been deteriorating for many years. When Macreedy reminds them that the War is over (it's 1945), the townsfolk agree, but you can imagine them not knowing. Like the Japanese soldiers in the hills who never heard about the end of the war until the 1960s, the residents of Black Rock appear to be more than a little isolated from the real world.

"Somebody's always looking for something in this part of the West. To the historians, it's the "Old West." To the book writers, it's the "Wild West." To the businessman, it's the "Undeveloped West." They say we're all poor and backward and I guess we are. We don't even have enough water. But to us, this place is our West. And I wish they'd leave us alone."

Reno Smith tells this to Macreedy when the stranger asks why people in Black Rock don't trust outsiders. Black Rock is the victim of the mythology of the American West. It's only developed in fits and starts, but never at its own pace. The current abiding morality is still very much stuck in the Wild West of Hollywood pictures. There doesn't seem to be an economy, entertainment, or much of anything in Black Rock, so the people there have regressed into an identity that's very much out of place in the modern world. And that identity is shaped by Reno Smith, who rules the town as judge, jury, and electorate (he can, apparently, name and replace town sheriffs at a whim).

It's an amazingly good cast. The actors have seven Oscars between them. That's three for Brennan, two for Tracey, and one each for Marvin and Borgnine (whose Oscar for Marty beat out Tracey's performance in this film). Among the rest of the cast, Ryan and Jagger were also Oscar nominees and had long and respectable careers in the industry. Most of the parts here aren't really complex enough to require awards calibre actors, but it's always nice to have people of this talent around. Marvin and Borgnine are mostly heavies, but they have a couple nice moments, while Jagger and Brennan's characters are mostly around to recover their dignities. Only Ryan gets to do real acting and his scenes with Tracey are excellent verbal duels, especially a menacing scene at an old gas station.

Tracey's Macreedy is one of cinema's great ambiguous characters. We get a ton of information on him, but very little of it goes together. His motivations are generally obscure, even when they get explained. Even repeat viewing leave you wondering exactly how much Macreedy knows at any given point. Things seem conflicting. We know Macreedy was in Italy in World War 2, but he seems much too old to have been there. The missing arm is too obviously an artifice to be taken seriously. Smith contacts a PI in Los Angeles who can find no evidence of Macreedy's existence. And why isn't Macreedy at all scared of death? Even once his competitive spirit is regenerated, he is still oddly blasé about the threats to his life. And maybe that's because he's apparently a karate expert. Or at least he kicks Earnest Borgnine's butt. And that's up with that? When the train stops in Black Rock when Macreedy leaves, the conductor observes that it was the first time the train had stopped in Black Rock in 4 years, as if unaware that it had stopped there one day earlier. I think it's possible to view Macreedy as a man who doesn't exist, as an avenging angel. And that interpretation amuses me, even if it isn't necessarily intended by Don McGuire's script.

What the script does have going for it is a variety of underlying messages, either from the explicit text, or in the subtext. There's no questioning that Bad Day At Black Rock is a harsh condemnation of the internment of Japanese-American citizens at the start of the second World War. Komoko was just a man trying to live off the land, making a go of it as best he could, while his son was off fighting in Europe for the Allies. When offered the choice between Komoko's breed of Americanism and Reno Smith's frustrated hatred for foreigners (he tried to enlist the day after Pearl Harbor, but the army wouldn't take him for medical reasons), the film doesn't really offer any choices. It opens the door for discussion of the Japanese Internments, which to this day remain a dark little secret that a disturbing percentage of Americans know nothing about. The film suggests what might happen to all of America if "the rule of law has left here and the gorillas have taken over."

But beyond the condemnation of institutionalized American racism, there's also the allegorical reading of the film that suggests it's an indictment of the Hollywood Blacklist, a la High Noon. This *is* a film that refers to Los Angeles as a "hotbed of pomp and vanity. The reading that this film is a pity party for Hollywood liberals whining about their mistreatment by conservatives is a half-reading at best. Certainly the film has a lot of rage at the mob rule of the film's villains, but the film has little interest in their motivations. They're just stock Western bad guys. The film saves its true contempt for the decent people of the town who have kept quiet for so long. If anything, Bad Day At Black Rock mocks weak Hollywood liberals for refusing to stand up for their beliefs and for their fellow men. It's about how honesty and decency can put a stop to a cycle of silence and complacency. The film never ponders why the evil can't be good, it asks why the good can't be better and how moral people can allow immorality in their midst.

The film's ending (**this is a hint that if you don't want the very end spoiled, you should probably stop reading ** )is self-congratulatory. Even I can't get around that. Doc approaches Macreedy as he's about to get on the train and he asks for Komoko's medal and says that getting the medal might help make things right in Black Rock. At this point, I desperately wanted Spencer Tracey to slap him in the face (or give 'im one of those karate chops) and say, "Gee whiz old man, you want a medal for something you should have done yourself four years ago?" or "We don't give men medals for realizing that covering up a murder might not be good for a town's karma." Or even to have rolled his eyes and said, "You're lucky I'm not having the whole town arrested as accessories to the murder and you want a medal too? How about a cookie? And some milk? Anything else I can get you to make you feel better about yourself?" Any of a variety of retorts seem satisfying and perhaps more logical. Instead, Macreedy gives him the medal, which is more than a little bogus.

Since from what I can tell, the conclusion of Bad Day At Black Rock leaves the city with a population or two or maybe three, it's hard to imagine the town having a major rebirth, but heck, it could happen.

Bad Day is one of the best kinds of classics. It's down and dirty and fast and can be interpreted any number of ways. Odds are, if you don't mention the whole "Blacklist" thing, most audiences just won't notice. OK, some audiences just won't notice. For those people, this film can just be a really solid modern Western/ thriller, which is just fine. And anything else you want to view it as? Well, it's all good by me.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS