The Mankiewicz Dispatches: NYFF52. NO WAY OUT and HOUSE OF STRANGERS.

NO WAY OUT

Synopsis: An neophyte doctor interning at a city hospital faces one extra hurdle in his uphill struggle: he's an African-American in the pre-Civil rights era. While trying to save the life of a gas station stick-up vet, he whips the deeply-ingrained prejudice of the man's brother into a neuotic frenzy.

Here's the thing: were you to remove the caustic invective from this, Mank's medical/police procedural, or replace the overt with the suggested, you'd still wind up with a crackerjack potboiler replete with potent social commentary, one that would transcend its time far better than its cinematic contemporaries, morality fables like GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT and BLACK LIKE ME. This is largely due to the brave work of onscreen opponents Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, the latter making his film debut. Unexpurged of its gutter vitriol, delivered in varying degrees of offense by its principals, Widmark especially and essentially bleeding hellfire from his pores, presaging De Niro's Max Cady by decades, it retains the power it held whence released decades ago. Partly because the artistry with which it was made, on both sides of the lens, has aged not a day. Partly, sadly, becuase our deep-seated national obssession over the amount of melanin one's skin possesses also has not.

Widmark may have bested his turn as Tommy Udo in KISS OF DEATH, his debut feature, in terms of villainous posterity, with his perf here. To his credit he invests just as much energy, sheer seething hatred, into this trash-talking bigot, as the perhaps safer role of Udo, who commits himself to moviegoing menory by no less an act than hurling a crippled mother down the stairs in her own wheelchair. Some perhaps said there was naught to go but up from there, in terms of sordid material or scabrous character. Widmark led audiences, bravely, on a far darker journey, and with no less enthusiasm. Indeed, if anything can be said about his zest for adopting the devil's skin it increased tenfold in this role, and it came with far less sympathy that that of Udo's cripple-killer, if that's even imaginable.

Easy to play such a devil. Hard to imbue him with empathy. Widmark had the ability to play noble, rakish, and downright vile. Sometimes all in the same role. Such was his charm that he was ever able to engage and maintain audience empathy. With this role, however, he risked alienating his core audience; both white and black. One misstep, and you become, in the words of his awful character, a "nigger-lover". One misjudged action or reaction, and you become synonymous with the foul ignorant you're portraying. It was bold of him to accept the potentially career-ruining role, absolutley brazen to invest it with the kind of skin-bursting energy he was capable of. Such was the mission set before him that he did not shirk, such should be our regard for his nuanced, danger-laden perf, one that not only evokes our marvel at the time it was helmed in, but at its relevance and resonance to this day. Gratefully and regrettably so.

A perf that would be rendered naught without the foil; Sidney Poitier's Dr. Luther Brooks, a role the actor strode through with cautious confidence, the kind of stride befitting royalty, a status which I've long accused the actor of. Poitier brings both a betrayed trust's regard and a professional matter-of-factness that helped change the game as surely as Jackie Robinson's stoicism. As goes on-field, goes on-screen. Poitier has the tougher job in the proceedings, both young adult and adult, inexperienced as advanced African-American in a society unaccepting of such, mature beyond his years regarding his skin's history in the United States. He behaves like displaced exile, his character his sole title, refusing its abandonment even at the cost of his life. Poitier did this not by remove from his audience, it must be said, but by involvment, by demanding their complicity. Here was an actor that could do more with glare and intonation than many generals might boast. His fortitude, certitude, even in the face of an autopsy that might not merely prove him killer, but murderous bigot himself, resolute. Poitier here must be beacon for a better future, but also flawed human. Sweaty, paranoid, vindictive. Of course, the proceedings will see him hero, and nobler than all about him. But even he bristles at his reasons for such by film's end. As pat and proper the denoument might be, the journey there still shocks.

Here is an example of Mank's bravery unbridled, so shocking to this day are the extremes he was willing to explore and display in order to make a truly personal statement, even though it may be studio assignment.

HOUSE OF STRANGERS

Synopsis: A successful Italian immigrant, a bank-owner emblematic of the American Dream, sees that dream threatened, and through the actions of his four sons witnesses the rot he has planted at the heart of his dynasty.

I can never help thinking that author Mario Puzo was a big fan of this film long before he was driven by gambling debts to pen his so-far immortal airport read THE GODFATHER. The burden of the youngest son to account for the older's weaknesses, the idea of Old World generosity overcoming New World bureaucracy, and therefore forging its own special type of corruption, even the calming of a hand shakily holding a lighter to a cigarette (Ats'amattawittyoo?!?) seems less coincidence and more influence. Richard Conte, the youngest and surest son in Mank's treatise on familial corruption, not so sublty named Max, even crossed over to Coppola's adap to clock time as Corleone foil Barzizni. Need more?

Ah, I'm-a too tired to tell more. Let's-a talk more aboutta this film.

Edward G. Robinson, though perhaps providing unintended assurance for Rod Steiger's more unstable perfs, bravely acquits himself as patriarch to an Italian clan both ostentatious and cautious. He employs his legendary low-centered-gravitas to both endear and damn this figure. Fealty and sympathy in one scene turns to bitter enmity and vendetta in the next. It speaks, in a simple yet profound way, to this nation's 20th Century foundations, those once fearful and therefore violent whence faced with so-called purity's sullying, then quickly opportunistic of new possibilities, some noble, most not. The dynamic between Conte and Robinson degenerates to Hamlet's status with his ghost poppa. The New World is never free of the Old, the story seems to dictate. Indeed, families are never rid of their worst instincts and tendencies, as evidenced by Conte's onscreen brothers, silent and still whence help is most desired, active and eloquent when their interests are in peril. Such is the effect of New World opulence and opportunity on Old World family tradition? Or is Mank saying there's no differnece between Old World and New World soullessness and greed?

In any event these two films serve as perfect double feature, both pushing melodrama to its hilt, both providing some sober comment on society, true, sadly, both then and now.

Next up: What looks to be my last journey to this retrospective, a trip I'm so forever grateful for, I'm thinking of getting tattooed. Plural. 1959's SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, tonight at the Howard Gilman Theater. I'll see you there. Lincoln Center, I love you. Follow my exploits at www.NitrateStock.net for full coverage of the NYFF52 Revivals series and the Mankrospective. Excelsior!

- Joe Walsh