|
Dusk till dawn, adolescence into adulthood. "Whatsa matter? Tryin' to rush your education?" Birthday of the bullied teen (John Barrymore Jr.), too feeble to blow out every candle on his cake. Dad (Preston Foster) is a brawny column brought down by the crippled sportswriter named Judge (Howard St. John), a protracted caning with a ritualistic bent. ("On your hands and knees. Let's get this over with.") The lad out for revenge with pistol and fedora is a boy desperately playacting, into the Los Angeles murkiness he goes, boxing rings and nightclubs and tenements. One last view of America from Joseph Losey, a close and admirably messy nightmare couched in noir suffocation. The Oedipal meander exposes a wide streak of dysfunction, it extends to the tippling "doctor of philosophy" (Philip Bourneuf) with the bitter girlfriend (Dorothy Comingore) plus a pair of unseen women, the protagonist's mother and the rotter's sister. The drumbeat of trauma dissipates briefly for a song, "Am I Too Young" wonders the gorgeous Black chanteuse (Mauri Leighton) whose brush with the wanderer's thoughtless prejudice leaves a lingering sting. The confrontation at the end of the search is a purposefully anticlimactic revelation, the prizefight earlier on also concludes as quickly as it begins. "To the Greeks. They, too, were gladiators." Morning comes to the industrial district, with it the painful truth that makes a man. "Ich glaube an Nächte." Plenty of Losey themes to be expanded, The Sleeping Tiger is a reworking and Time Without Pity a reversal. With Joan Lorring, Howard Chamberlain, Myron Healey, and Emile Meyer. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |