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After the neutrality of The Young Stranger, John Frankenheimer shoots the works right out of the gate: The introductory montage goes from plaintive harmonica to pounding drums, building to charging hoods reflected on a blind boy's shades and ejaculatory stabbing. "Let's separate the baby killers from the adult killers." Three leather jackets, bigot (John Davis Chandler) and halfwit (Neil Nephew) and tag-along (Stanley Kristien), a matter of juvenile gangs in Harlem, Italians versus Puerto Ricans. The D.A. (Edward Andrews) has political aspirations and angles for a murder indictment, the prosecutor (Burt Lancaster) has an investigation to conduct. One of the accused is the son of an ex-girlfriend (Shelley Winters), the wife (Dina Merrill) "majored in sarcasm at Vassar" and sees him as part of the systemic problem. "Here we go with the passive theories of social oppression." Ray's Knock on Any Door is the precursor, adjusted to the new decade and a Wellesian sense of shock. (Merrill terrorized in a mirrored elevator points up the debt to Touch of Evil.) What shall we do with our young, to revise a famous Griffith query. The police detective (Telly Savalas) suggests "a good swift kick," "a little mass execution now and then" is half-jokingly recommended by the psychiatrist (Milton Selzer). Frankenheimer's packed frames encompass funeral processions, subway cars and subterranean pool halls, the camera takes note of the Guernica print in the teenage torpedo's cluttered den. Finding the truth for the protagonist comes down to sabotaging his own case in court, the victim's forbiddingly vengeful mother (Vivian Nathan) has to make do with paternalistic bromides. Robbins and Wise are concurrent with the dilemma, plus songs. With Larry Gates, Pilar Seurat, Jody Fair, David J. Stewart, Luis Arroyo, and Roberta Shore. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |