Boomerang! (1947)

Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947) Not to be confused with the Eddie Murphy vanity project made 45 years later.  No, this one is an Elia Kazan film when he was still learning the ropes in film-making and experimenting with what he could do.  This one was shot on location in a semi-documentary style and based on a Reader's Digest article (written by the author of The Greatest Story Ever Told and the book the film Boy's Town was based on) about a true incident involving a murdered priest, a vagrant scapegoated for the crime after a public outrage, and a prosecutor ethical enough to not follow "procedure."

Boomerang! tells the story of the murder in Connecticut of a popular minister, gunned down in the street on a pleasant evening.  There are many witnesses, but the description—medium-build man in a dark coat and light hat—creates few helpful leads.  But, the public outcry for "justice" (or something like it), considering the slow speed of the investigation, fueled by an ambitious newspaper publisher, puts government officials in panic mode, and the resulting pressure on the police department—chief investigator played by Lee J. Cobb—creates too many suspects and the arrest of a drifter (Arthur Kennedy) who protests his innocence.

When the District Attorney (Dana Andrews) goes over the facts of the case for trial, he is unconvinced, but instead of doing the politically expedient thing—try the case on the flimsy evidence anyway and mollify the city—he decides to present the facts of the case as he sees them, in effect shouldering the roles of both prosecutor and defense, attempting to prove that the defendant could not actually have committed the crime.

It's an unusual chapter in jurisprudence, but, in reality, it's how the process should work. The norm is for the culprit (alleged) to be in the dock and the prosecutor makes the case, presents the evidence, states the facts of what happened.  The defense must refute or explain.  But, even if the prosecutor doesn't stand behind the facts, it's only for political reasons, laziness, ego, or protecting his job that would compel the P.A. to go ahead with a flimsy case.  By rights, such a case shouldn't even be brought forth, wasting court costs and time.  It's only because of the incorruptibility of this D.A. that events unfolded as they did and in a way, demonstrated in court, that paralleled the risks the official was taking in his efforts.

Kazan seems an unlikely director for the project—his penchant for heightened drama only displayed in the citizen's cries for justice, if only trumped-up justice.  But, as produced by Darryl Zanuck (for whom story was everything), Kazan takes a docu-drama approach, taking it to the streets, as he would throughout his work in the '50's, emphasizing the grit, even in the well-scrubbed and groomed city-squares of Connecticut.  And Kazan assembled a low-key group of character actors—Andrews, Cobb, Karl Malden, Sam Levene, Ed Begley, Kennedy—to underplay the drama.  Only Jane Wyatt betrays any genteel theatricality.  It ain't noir—too many foot-candles—and it's not cinema verite, as in the style of some of the Fox pot-boilers of this type.  No, this one's set on "simmer," but it's a good preamble to the director's work as he transitioned from theater, outside into the real world.

Thieves' Highway

Thieves' Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949) A revenge story based in the wild and wooly world of wildcat truckers (also explored in A.I. Bezzerides' similarly themed They Drive By Night).  Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) comes home after a big score and showers his family with presents.  He's so full of himself that he doesn't notice the obvious:  Dad's missing his legs (which makes the slippers he bought him a very poor choice).  It seems while Nick was away, Dad got rooked on a vegetable run, taken for a long drunk, and had a bad crash in his dilapidated truck, crippling him. 

Worldly-wise and hardened in combat, Nick decides on an assault on the man who crushed his dad's dreams, one Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb), a bad apple who'll spoil the whole bunch right down to the bottom of the barrell.  He partners with the wild-catter who bought Pop's truck (the great Millard Mitchell) to deliver two loads of golden delicious to Figlia's produce wholesaler in San Fran'...if they can get through a gauntlet that includes duplicitous rival wild-catters, a truck with a bad universal (and not much good!), 36 hours straight on the road without any sleep, and worn tires (a sequence that Dassin turns into a thrilling montage of overlapping images).  

Except for the loading of apples, all this takes place at night, and no one could dredge the dark as well as Jules Dassin (as he was always proud to announce, that's pronounced "Da-ssin," from the U.S.).  Dassin always had a flair for the street and the twisted culture of film noir, and Thieves Highway is gritty and street-smart: no one in this movie is naive or innocent, everybody has an agenda or an angle, and Nick has to keep his head on straight (tough to do with a neck injury received when a truck collapsed on him while changing a tire), whether negotiating with Figlia or dealing with the street-frail (Valentina Cortese) hired by Figlia to entertain Nick while he works the angles.

It's an education, one that toughens Nick up and makes him see that there's more than what he imagined in his existence before.  Sure, he's earned a living and survived the war, but...  It's one thing to avoid death, it's quite another to embrace life.