Force of Evil

At a time when right wing politicians are waging war on freedom of expression under the banner of patriotism, our latest Film Studies series explores the works of leftist writers, directors and actors in the late 1940s, before the McCarthy era stamped out many careers through the House of Un-American Activities Committee hearings and Hollywood’s self-imposed blacklist. Each film in this five week series (Mondays at 11am) will be introduced in a 15-20 minute talk by writer and film critic Mike Archibald.

A crime film of uncommon eloquence, Force of Evil portrays big business in Faustian terms: crooked lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) is on the verge of striking it rich, but his scheme will only work if he betrays his brother Leo (Thomas Gomez). Director-screenwriter Abraham Polonsky uses the mob-controlled “numbers” racket to highlight the soul-destroying elements of capitalism, and Garfield is the perfect star for his purposes: he exudes both the cockiness of a bigshot and the desperation of a victim.

Polonsky was one of the key figures of Hollywood communism, and yet this is the only film he directed before being blacklisted in 1951. As in his screenplay for Body and Soul (1947), which is also playing in this series, organized crime is a stand-in for capitalism in general; what sets this film apart from other works of Hollywood communism is its unusual style: the dialogue is florid and allusive, and Polonsky gives it a prominence equal to that of his stark visuals.

Force of Evil has been a major influence on my work… particularly on Mean Streets, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

Martin Scorsese

A poetic, terse, beautifully exact, and highly personal re-creation of the American underworld, with an unpunctuated Joycean screenplay by Polonsky that is perhaps unique in the American cinema.

Don Drucker, Chicago Reader

One of the key films of the 40s, it extracts a clinical analysis of the social, moral and physical evils attending on the numbers racket, centering this on a remarkably complex portrayal of the mutual guilt of two brothers caught at opposite ends of the same rat trap… The dialogue, terse and unpretentious but given an incantatory quality by its calculated hesitations and repetitions, has an unmistakable tang of gritty urban poetry that floods the entire film. Like no other film of the period, it stands as a testament, its mood – as Polonsky has confessed – being compounded on the one hand by fear of the McCarthy witch-hunts, and on the other by conflict in potential victims doubting the absolute justice of their cause.

Tom Milne, Time Out