Here at Midcentury Productions we’re no stranger to “political films”—the ones that prompted Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn to utter one of his most famous rejoinders: “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” (Oddly, though, despite this utterance, Goldwyn’s percentage of films with social content was higher than most of his contemporaries during Hollywood’s Golden Age.)
That’s why we were thrilled to see Eddie Muller devote a Friday night at his recent NOIR CITY to two such films—CROSSFIRE and OPEN SECRET—which just happened to be the same double bill we featured five years ago at the Roxie. It was part of a noir series that dealt more with social themes than has usually been the case for that venerable franchise.
That said, we can’t help thinking that Eddie may have pulled his punches a bit regarding America’s thorniest social issue: race. To his credit, he screened NO WAY OUT, with its withering depiction of a racist (a fierce performance from Richard Widmark). And he reprised ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, where racial prejudice causes a heist to go wrong.
But these films were separated from one another on the program, as if the issue remains just too touchy to tackle head-on.
If we’d been consulted in those planning sessions, we’d have recommended that THE INTRUDER (1962) be screened as the follow-up feature to NO WAY OUT. That would have kiboshed our long-gestating plan to screen it at the Roxie, but the combined impact of those films would definitely be something to experience. And so, on Sunday, April 3rd, we’ll screen THE INTRUDER, a film featuring a much more cunning racist played by the unsinkable William Shatner, and those of you who saw NO WAY OUT last week can see what we mean.
Filmed mostly on location in southeastern Missouri, THE INTRUDER brought an unsettling verisimilitude to its story as a result. Shatner plays Adam Cramer, a provocateur hired to disrupt the efforts of a small town to integrate its schools. The film is an eerie preview of events that would shortly take place in the deepest parts of the South—the flashpoint of the Civil Rights movement. His incendiary speech to a crowd ready to festoon the countryside with burning crosses is an electrifying moment, and one that reminds us just how great an actor Shatner was before he became sidetracked by popular acclaim.
You’ll likely be surprised to discover that Roger Corman directed THE INTRUDER; it is, without doubt, a good distance from the tone, approach and subject matter of his other films. For years afterward, Corman would reminisce about the film with a note of pride, along with some barely unsuppressed glee at how he concealed the true intent of his filming Shatner’s incendiary scene as if it were a real-life rally for segregationists. As he noted: “They never would have let us shoot there if they’d known how the footage was going to be used.” (As it was, Corman and his crew had several narrow escapes after word leaked out about the true nature of the project.)
Will Adam Cramer succeed in stopping school integration in its tracks? You’ll have to join us on April 3 to find out. What we can tell you is that THE INTRUDER’s sixtieth anniversary screening comes at a time when racism in America is as controversial a topic as it’s ever been, and when the assumption of the nation’s broad acceptance of civil rights has been dealt a series of body blows. THE INTRUDER is much more explicit in warning us not to take anything for granted, which makes it perhaps the timeliest sixty-year-old film ever.
FOR any repertory film programmer, there are “bucket list” films that he or she wants dearly to bring back to an audience. THE INTRUDER is surely one that has been at or near the top of my list for years. Outside of the “film noir” context discussed above, however, the question then becomes: what do you show with it?
The answer can be daunting. There are any number of well-intentioned films about race relations made in the same time window as THE INTRUDER, but only a few of them have retained much of their original resonance. I originally felt that Larry Peerce’s ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO, with its measured but ultimately devastating account of an interracial marriage and the fate of the white woman’s child from a previous union, made for a solid contrast.
But then the world brought us a large slice of senselessness in the Ukraine, casting a pall on the idea of presenting films that leave audiences with little or no hope. That consideration brought me back around to another film, NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964), with similar unflinching power but one that did not ultimately indulge itself in what literary critic Tom Quirk calls a “tragedy trap.”
NOTHING BUT A MAN, starring the now-obscure African-American actor-director Ivan Dixon, seems to be leading itself in such a direction, but writer-director Michael Roemer captures something different in a film that is best described as a “belated coming-of-age” story—where a grown African-American male finally comes to grips with the withering legacy of Jim Crow and its shattering impact on black masculinity.
Dixon is not afraid to embody a character with contradictions and flaws—in a scene that is on the thinnest edge of acceptability in today’s world, he hits his wife, an act borne from frustration and pent-up rage at the emasculating racism he must confront when working for southern whites.
From that awful moment, however, he forces himself to revisit his father, a man who, like so many black men in the South during the first half of the twentieth century, abandoned his children and drowned his rage in drink. (The actor playing the father, Julius Harris, was only eight years older than Dixon, but in his first-ever screen performance he captures a harrowing reality with a catatonic intensity that is utterly remarkable.)
This scene is the pivot, the crossroads for Dixon and for the film, as it sums up all of the character interaction in a tale that smolders with the prospect of dire consequences. This is where it turns into a parable of hope and resolve, where we silently see an already-grown man grow up before our eyes. It’s a rare, precious moment that reminds us that there are such men who finally grow into compassion, and discover how to make that a centerpiece for engaging with and changing the ugliness of the world around them.
To be sure, Dixon’s character is no Nelson Mandela, but what he’s finally learned at the conclusion of NOTHING BUT A MAN is leading him squarely in that direction. The burden of “double-consciousness,” as articulated by W. E. B. Dubois, will remain unfortunately prominent in how he views the world, but it’s a burden he will bear in order to spare others from having to do so in later generations.
That hard-won story arc, and the interplay between Dixon and several other notable African-American actors (Harris, Yaphet Kotto, Gloria Foster, and noted singer Abbey Lincoln as his wife), brought me around to seeing it as the appropriate and necessary “change of pace” for a viewing audience committed to engaging the reverberations of America’s race issue. I hope you’ll come out on April 3 and let me know if you think I got it right.