|
The alliance with Pabst and Lang is at once declared in a conscious acquisition of Germanic expressionism, cf. Four Sons. A Dublin of the mind, namely that of the colossal lummox (Victor McLaglen) who's been banished from the rebel organization, "now the British think I'm with the Irish and the Irish think I'm with the British." His girl (Margot Grahame) conceals the demimondaine's slanted hat under a pious shawl, escape is a vaporous vision and a model ocean liner in the display window. The fugitive friend (Wallace Ford) has a bounty on his head, the Judas act gets the protagonist twenty pounds and one long night of blubbering agony. "Did somebody die and leave you a pot of gold?" John Ford has sparse sets and smoke and fog, with Carné around the corner to take up the allegorical lugubriousness. Oppression is a semi-accepted state, the street performer doesn't even stop his song as a patrol of Black and Tans search him, the underground leader (Preston Foster) sets up a kangaroo court. "This is no time for sentiment. This is war." The traitor meanwhile labors to stifle his guilt with a whirlwind of spending, money for blind witnesses and fish-and-chips barflies and bordello dwellers. (His coins glow obscenely in the mournful blackness of the victim's wake.) Pointing fingers and outstretched arms, the hulking clown "rich as Croesus" until he's not, "a big lump of beef" then. The dead man's sister (Heather Angel) just wants an end to the tragedy, the mother (Una O'Connor) is a Madonna posed in church, waiting for the sinner's confession. "I have a queer feeling there's going to be a strange face in heaven in the morning." Scorsese helps himself to the coda for The Departed, but it's Ferrara in Bad Lieutenant who truly absorbs its Catholic anguish. Cinematography by Joseph August. With J.M. Kerrigan, Joe Sawyer, Neil Fitzgerald, Donald Meek, Francis Ford, D'Arcy Corrigan, Grizelda Harvey, and Denis O'Dea. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |