Retro Film Review: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

One of the great paradoxes of American history is in the fact that Hollywood in 1950s - era usually associated with Cold War hysteria, McCarthy's witch hunts, demonisation of any nonconformist thought and Hollywood blacklists -brought many great, groundbreaking films that actually challenged self-righteous view of USA as the greatest nation in the world. Those films exposed some dark, unflattering truths about American society by pointing towards some burning problems previously swept under the carpet. One of those problems was, of course, racism as most visible violation of noble American ideas about equal rights for all of its citizens. Racism was also responsible for the most shameful episode in the American involvement in WW2 – forced internment of Japanese Americans. One of the first Hollywood films to speak about this embarrassing issue was Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955 thriller directed by John Sturges.

The film begins in 1945, few months after the end of WW2. Black Rock is small Arizona town, so small and insignificant that passenger train never stops there. When it stops it is big news, especially when the passenger stepping off is mysterious one-armed stranger named McCreedy (played by Spencer Tracy). McCreedy's presence alone is enough to cause suspicion by townspeople and open animosity by local cowboy goons. McCreedy would earn even more hostility when he starts inquiring about Japanese farmer who used to live in Black Rock before the war. Reno Smith (played by Robert Ryan), rich farmer and the only real authority in town, is especially upset over stranger's inquiry. McCreedy is being told that the Japanese farmer was "relocated" after the war, but he suspects something more sinister and that some townspeople, including Smith, had something to do with it. His suspicions are validated when he realises that Smith and his goons don't want him to leave Black Rock alive.

Bad Day at Black Rock is often referred as companion piece to High Noon. Those two films have many things in common - setting in small Western town, populated with hypocrites and cowards; lone protagonist who would risk his life over noble principles; suspense created with certainty of inevitable showdown; relatively short length. Unfortunately, John Sturges could hardly compete with directorial skills of Fred Zinnemann while screenwriter Don McGuire couldn't repeat the complexity of Carl Foreman's High Noon script and its characters. Bad Day at Black Rock looks promising in the beginning, though. Sturges withholds information from the viewers. When McCreedy steps off the train, dressed in black, his presence is menacing and his motives unclear. Spencer Tracy excellently plays this character by slowly building our confidence with grace, dignity, intelligence and confidence. It is real pleasure watching how Tracy outsmarts those who want to trick him and how he handles those who want to intimidate him. By showing growingly hostile reaction of the people like Smith and always reminding us of the hopelessness of McCreedy's situation, Sturges slowly builds the suspense. Unfortunately, it all begins to fall apart in the second part of the film, when the mystery is revealed and all sides begin preparations for inevitable final conflict. Instead of action, we are given sermons and McCreedy, who is shown as man who can take care of himself, actually talks his way out of bad situation. Some of the lines spoken by characters are powerful, but unrealistic, hardly expected from people who spent all their lives as ordinary, blue-collar inhabitants in small desert towns. That is especially so with character of Smith, played by Robert Ryan, who seems somewhat too refined for simple redneck bigot. Final showdown is also ruined with unnecessary melodramatic plot twist.

Perhaps the worst flaw of Bad Day at Black Rock is lack of courage in handling whole embarrassing affair with Japanese Americans in WW2. Don McGuire uses euphemism of "relocation" for the event that was actually nothing less than state-sponsored ethnic cleansing (Interestingly enough, when Croatian and Serbian intellectuals in early 1990s propagated ethnic cleansing as the only solution of Yugoslav crisis, they also used euphemism called "humane resettlement"). Racism, that was the prime motivating factor of such event, is never attributed to the system itself; instead, racism and bigotry is something that should be attributed only to few rotten individuals like Smith. General population, which gave tacit support to ethnic cleansings and holocausts of this world, either by looking the other way or enjoying the fruits of someone else's dirty work, is actually forgiven in this film. McGuire, on the other hand, redeems himself by using this opportunity to expose rarely seen economic motivation for racial, ethnic and religious hatred – Smith did what he did because he wanted someone else's property. What is really sad about this film is the fact that the events portrayed in it don't belong to dark pages of history - Bad Day at Black Rock can still teach us a lot about the world we still live in.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on February 4th 2000)

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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14554-bad-day-at-black-rock
Critic: AA