In the opening sequence, we
meet Robert Ryan's Joe Parkson. Limping out of the shadows in a rain-wet
jacket, desperate, a newspaper in his hand, he disappears into an apartment building. Once
inside, he goes upstairs, enters his room, and heads straight for the corner
dresser. In the third drawer is a gun and a clip. He takes the gun out, inserts
the clip, and stares over the barrel. For a second, we're close up on Joe's
sweaty mug. He's focused, intense. And then the wonderfully sharp and simple
title is splashed across the screen. Joe packs the gun in an Army bag with some
clothes, goes down to the street, his leg dragging, and he gets on a Greyhound
for Los Angeles. We follow him, in a series of quick cuts, on his journey
across the country: angrily aware, awake in the dark as others on the bus
sleep. He arrives in an idyllic California town called Santa Lisa on Memorial
Day and limps into a hotel, where he gets a room and looks up a name in the
phonebook: Frank Enley. It's a dark and mysterious opening, establishing just
what we need to know to ratchet up the tension. Ryan's hunting, and we're
frightened for the guy he's after.
Van Heflin plays Frank
Enley. When we meet Frank, he seems to have the works: he's a war hero with a
beautiful young wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), and a cute kid. He's put on a
pedestal by the folks in Santa Lisa, where he's made a name as a contractor. At
the festivities for a housing project that he's had a big hand in building,
Frank is praised for his service to both country and community. Grinning an
aw-shucks grin, his cute kid up on his shoulders, Frank's face is full of
promise and pride. He goes on stage and accepts the town's gratitude
humbly. We see a close-up of Leigh's Edith, smiling, so thrilled for her husband.
Next we cut to Frank hunting around for a fishing pole in a cubby under the
stairs at home. He's going fishing at Redwood Lake with his pal for a couple of
days. Golly gee. Edith comes down, beaming, and helps him find the pole that's
hiding right in front of him. He embraces her and they stare intently into each
other's eyes, genuinely in love. This brief glimpse into Frank's perfect life
is deeply unsettling in the way that the beginning of David Lynch's Blue
Velvet is. We know something dark is underneath it all. We know that Joe
is in Santa Lisa looking for Frank. We know this perfect life will be
shattered. We just don't know how or when or why exactly.
Turns out it happens very quickly. Not long after Frank leaves for Redwood Lake, Joe shows up at his house. Edith doesn't think twice about letting him know that Frank's gone fishing. Joe follows him to the lake. When Frank becomes aware of Joe's presence, we see a darkness pass over his face. He turns cold and hustles back to Santa Lisa, his confused fishing pal in tow. He hides out in the house, scared, and tries to pass off that nothing's wrong with Edith. But it is. She can tell. He's waiting for Joe to come for him. Frank goes around pulling shades in the house, turning off lights. If Joe comes, he wants it to seem as though they're gone. And when Joe does finally show up, parked out in the street, Frank's paranoia goes full throttle. In a terrifying scene, Joe tries the door of the dark house, his leg dragging across the porch, as Frank and Edith huddle together inside.
Our vision of Frank changes
pretty quickly, too. We come to understand that Joe's hunting him for war
crimes. No hero, Frank was a stool pigeon for the Nazis, sacrificing the lives
of his men in exchange for food. Joe survived by faking that he was dead and he
wears the betrayal in his crippled leg. He's been waiting for Frank to turn up,
Frank having disappeared from the east coast years before without a trace. A
small newspaper article about the “war hero” turned contractor has led Joe to
Santa Lisa. Such is the way that—despite Frank's pleasant wife and sweet kid—we
wind up rooting for the hunter to kill, not for the hunted to escape.
But nothing's easy in Act
of Violence. Frank, thinking it's best to leave his family out of it, goes
to a conference in Los Angeles and is pursued by Joe. Back in Santa Lisa, Joe's
girlfriend turns up to help Edith. She doesn't want Joe to be a murderer. She
thinks it'll ruin him more than having to live with Frank's betrayal. Edith
follows Frank to Los Angeles, and he tells her the truth about the war. He
can't go to the cops about Joe. He can't risk being uncovered as a treasonous
coward. Believing that Joe's girlfriend has convinced him to leave Frank alone,
Edith can finally rest. But Frank knows that Joe's still hot on his heels. In
an unexpected turn, Frank goes on the lam in Los Angeles, taking up with
past-her-prime prostitute and barfly Pam (played by the stunning Mary Astor).
Pam wants to help Frank but winds up inadvertently hooking him up with a
hitman, Johnny (Berry Kroeger), who convinces Frank that knocking off Joe is
the only way to go. On the ropes, drunk, Frank agrees. The film hurtles towards
its conclusion, a showdown at the railroad station back in Santa Lisa, Joe and
Johnny and Frank all converging on the same place at the same time but with
different intentions.
At 82 minutes, the picture
is spare, without an ounce of fat around the waist. It's a punchy little hymn
of cowardice and desperation. Robert Ryan's got one of the great noir faces,
and he's a perfect Joe, revenge-driven yet conflicted, a hunter with heart. Van
Heflin spends much of the film looking queasy, playing the coward with a
revolting and magnetic tenderness. Leigh is aces as the tortured wife—when (or
if) we feel sympathy for Frank, it's because of her and her attempts to understand
his crimes. Astor turns in a weighty
supporting performance as Pam, bringing a palpable sadness to the role. When she finds out what Frank's done, what
he's running from, helping him is just another in a long series of failures for her. The
picture's full of crosses and unexpected turns. It's portrait of small town and
city—both shadowy, both perilous, both with terrible secrets—is uncompromising,
and Zinnemann's direction is expert. Included in the Film Noir Classic
Collection, Volume 4 (alongside other neglected gems like Crime Wave, They
Live By Night, The Big Steal, Side Street, Where Danger Lives,
and Tension), Act of Violence is a picture that I'd put up
against the greats of the era, a stylized and frenzied exploration of
conscience and chance.
