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The other side of lawlessness in the year of The Public Enemy, and four decades later there's the Dirty Harry exacerbation. The middle-class New York family settles in for supper, in hobbles Grandpa (Charles "Chic" Sale), a Civil War holdover ditching the old soldiers' home. "But after all, blood's thicker than government pea-soup." The evening's entertainment is a gangland rubout viewed through living-room windows like movie screens, the capo (Ralph Ince) is the bête noire of the overzealous District Attorney (Walter Huston). Witness intimidation and child kidnapping are the tools of the trade, a civilian wedge between ruthless opponents. "Sounds like a dime novel!" Bloody-minded prosecutor and cracker-barrel Nativist see eye to eye, the object lesson on collateral damage has its reductio ad absurdum with a boy chucked around the hoodlums' hideout. (Before that, Grant Mitchell as the milquetoast paterfamilias is brought in for "just a friendly talk" and repeatedly swung against a wall until the plaster cracks.) William Wellman's Ozuesque attention to tykes humanizes the propaganda, his avid technique tightens its screws—the housewife (Frances Starr) gazes at the ticking clock and empty chair, her nocturnal vigil yields to the battered husband found in a ditch. "The fight of every decent man" suits the peppery codger, who plays "Yankee Doodle" on his fife, engages in vaudeville routines with street workers, and survives a shootout only to face the cemetery near the retirement facility. "Have you ever heard of the word duty?" "Yeah, and I've heard of the word baloney!" Wyler in The Desperate Hours gilds the theme. With Edward J. Nugent, Sally Blane, Dickie Moore, George Ernest, Russell Hopton, and Nat Pendleton. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |