He Ran All the Way

Our latest Film Studies series explores the works of leftist writers, directors and actors in the late 1940s, before the McCarthy era interrupted many careers through 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.

John Berry’s gripping, poignant thriller stars John Garfield in his final film performance. He plays Nick Robey, a small-time hood on the run from a stick-up gone wrong. Shelly Winters plays Peg Dobbs, the insecure young lady whose family Robey seeks cover with — and eventually holds hostage. Winters is terrific in her portrayal of inhibited romantic desire, and Garfield gives his all as the sympathetic, tormented criminal: the tension between his toughness and his tenderness is powerful indeed.

There are no rapacious gangsters or oppressed workers in this movie, but the concern with blue-collar life and the theme of postwar economic discontent mark it as a work of the Hollywood left. In many ways, He Ran All the Way is the last gasp of Hollywood communism, and it bridges the working-class, social-protest cinema of the Forties and the retreat to domestic, psychological concerns that would characterize post-blacklist Hollywood. From director Berry to Garfield to the multiple screenwriters to cinematographer James Wong Howe, many of the creative personnel on this film were persecuted by the anti-Communist witch hunters.

By far the best movie by the blacklisted director John Berry… Working with the writers Hugo Butler, Guy Endore, and (uncredited) Dalton Trumbo, Berry turned a standard ticking-clock melodrama into an action-movie meditation on manhood. James Wong Howe did the sweaty, close-quarters cinematography.

Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

First rate, a hard, harsh, fast-moving thriller.

Philip French, The Observer