Bad Day at Black Rock

1955's BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK has one of the most attention grabbing openings I can recall.  A train rockets through the mountainous terrain of the West.  The locomotive barrels toward the camera, as does a logo announcing that this was filmed in CinemaScope.  Wish I could've seen this in a theater.  Off that train steps a man named John J. Macreedy.  For awhile, we aren't sure exactly who he is, if he works for anyone. What his motivation may be.  Why he only has one workable arm.  He's landed in a flyspeck hamlet in Arizona called Black Rock, where he will spend one day, perhaps the longest of his life.

It's post WWII, and the townsfolk are aloof and downright threatening from the moment Macreedy approaches.  A classic case of not taking kindly to strangers, though to the nth.  They seem unusually defensive, even hostile.  They try to refuse him lodging and use of a rental Jeep.  Macreedy seems unsurprised, but is not easily intimidated, even if he seems weak.  He is in fact on a mission to find a missing Japanese man whose last known whereabouts were close by.   Are the citizens of Black Rock hiding something? An old secret? Is there some conspiracy? In a small town, it's not hard to figure.

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK has been called a noir Western.  Two of my favorite genres, there.  Howard Breslin's short story "Bad Time at Honda" has been adapted by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman into a lean, tight screenplay, that was way ahead of its time in its examination of nationalism and prejudice.  How many films from the mid 1950s considered the ills of America's treatment of Japanese Americans?  Or dared to criticize the role of the American male?

The film is realized with brilliant economy and measured, slow burn tension by director John Sturges.  The cinematic language employed seems fresh, all these years later.  Stylish yet spare, revealing all we need to know.  The isolation of  the desert town is beautifully realized by William C. Mellor, a perfect metaphor for the hearts and minds of its citizens.  It's akin to a master class.  Paul Thomas Anderson once stated that aspiring filmmakers should skip film school and just listen to Sturges' DVD commentary.

And the actors.  Spencer Tracy, nominated for Best Actor by the Academy, does his own slow burn in a performance that is just right.  In support are the likes of Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Marvin.  Everyone in the cast is fine, and flesh out what proves to be a surprisingly progressive mid twentieth century drama.