|
The Florida coast is seen behind the opening titles brutally lashed by an incoming hurricane compared in voiceover to a whirlpool, "evil offsprings of the elements." In the air is the former Navy lieutenant (Richard Widmark), alone with his thoughts while "spinning around up here like a cork." (The memory that first comes when taking stock of his past is triumph and loss at the roulette.) Castigated by brass, hired alongside his girlfriend (Veronica Lake) by a shady chocolate impresario, energized by a chance encounter with a fellow "engine jockey" (John Russell). The colleague's wife (Linda Darnell) is an old flame grown weary of unpredictability: "I was on a rollercoaster when I knew you then. I'm off it now." As with the Dark Waters swamp, André De Toth keys psychological strife to natural surroundings, howling winds and shaking frames expertly embody the inner turbulence of a desperate heel flying for redemption. Candy business turns out to be a front for narcotics, early on it's all the same to the protagonist, he flips a coin and calls it "my medal." The weight of betrayal is swiftly felt, a marvelously vertiginous effect has the camera pulling back from the ambulance carrying Lake to the hospital to follow Widmark and Darnell driving in the opposite direction. The goal is to earn the belated Navy Cross, the whole thing is crystallized in the dead calm of the storm's eye, trial not by fire but by "a lot of sky and a lot of water." ("A little deeper understanding" is the doctor's recommendation.) The toll of addiction reappears in Monkey on My Back, and there's Ray's hallucinatory revision in Bitter Victory. With Gary Merrill, Walter Kingsford, Raymond Greenleaf, Joe De Santis, Stanley Waxman, and Morris Ankrum. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |