Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Pretty Good

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

A good Western-Thriller by the great director John Sturges, with a courageous message, especially at the time of the film: the silence and conformism of the people, in a skillful and subtle criticism to the times of "McCarthyism" that lived at the time of the film. There are quite a few similarities to "High Noon", made three years earlier. Spencer Tracy has an excellent performance (nominated for Oscar) as well as the remaining actors in the cast (Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, among others). The only weakness is some movie sequences that are quite unlikely. Still, a movie that delivers great entertainment and a beautiful message.

Film Soleil, those sun baked, filled with light, desert/tropical Noir/Neo Noirs."Change the darkened street to a dry, sun-beaten road. Convert the dark alley to a highway mercilessly cutting through a parched, sagebrush-filled desert. Give the woman cowboy boots and stick her in a speeding car, driven by a deranged man whose own biological drives lead him less often to sex than to fights over money. Institute these changes (to film noir) and you have film soleil." - DK HolmIn the city it's usually what you can't see that can kill you. In the desert everything you see can kill you.Desert, the anti-city. Wide open spaces, exposed, agoraphobia. A stream-liner is snaking. A steel sidewinder.Black Rock. Nowheresville. A Death Valley desert fly speck. Whistle stop. Somewhere on the California/Nevada border. The Southern Pacific RR. A dirt road main street. A baker's dozen collection of dilapidated buildings. The station. The beanery, Sam's Bar & Grill. A General Store abutting a barber shop. A two story hotel. A sawbones/morticians, a gas station, two residences and a rinky-dink hoosegow.It must be Saturday. Hicksville. Everybody's in town. Cowboy porch lizards. Relaxin'. Shootin' the breeze. Waiting' for the Streamliner to blow through. She's Greased lightning. Like clockwork. The day's big excitement. A faint rumble. The train's a coming'. You can hear the drone of the F7's down the valley. The pitch changes. The horn blares. Station agent excited. She's stopping. A train hasn't stopped here in four years. What's up. Lizards all rubbernecking.A man gets off. Looks like a city slicker. Suit, tie, fedora, suitcase. A Stranger. Ex career vet. A one hand man, Macreedy (Tracy).Adobe Flat! The name raises bristles. He's looking' fer Komoko. It stirs the hornet's nest. The lizards get standoff-ish. Hostile. Downright cantankerous. The crap hits the fan. Oh Komoko he left town they tell him, sent to an internment camp.They telephone the biggest toad in their pond Reno Smith (Ryan). But the cat's already out of the bag. Something is wrong, slantindicular, cattywampus. Macreedy knows they're lying. But he doesn't know why.Cowboy Coley (Borgnine) is glassing Macreedy from a boulder patch. He ambushes him on the way back to town. Tries to run him off the road. Back in town Coley is still trying to provoke, trying to raise sand. Spencer Tracy goes from stoically laconic to determinedly obsessed as the odds and the towns alienation build against him. Robert Ryan's unfriendly persuasion streaks more vicious as the truth is slowly exposed. Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin are the two town bullies both are a few cards short of a full deck. Dean Jagger the town lawman and Walter Brennan a sawbones/mortician are the town drunks. John Ericson is a fidgety hotel keeper and Anne Francis servers as the film's nominal femme fatale.The film juxtaposes the high desert grit of a weathered bleached bones town against a backdrop of astonishing but desolate beauty. The film has a fascinating Edward Hopperesque realism look to it. This was MGM's first release in Cinemascope. 10/10

Screen legend Spencer Tracy plays one-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy in this excellent film, one of director John Sturges' best. Adapted by Don McGuire from the story by Howard Breslin, and scripted by Millard Kaufman, it shows what happens as the grimly determined but low key Macreedy arrives in a tiny desert community called Black Rock a few months after WWII has ended. The locals all have a big ugly secret to hide, and are set on showing Macreedy how inhospitable they can be. Particularly odious is Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who gets by with a little help from thugs such as Coley Trimble (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector David (Lee Marvin).Sturges gets maximum impact from the isolated location, a place that has very few resources to offer our hero. Extremely well shot in Cinema Scope by William C. Mellor, it generates some agreeable suspense, especially in the last act of the picture when Macreedy is most actively menaced by Smith and gang. One might argue that Smith overplays his hand too soon into the story, but it just goes to show how deep his hatred lies. But Macreedy is a basically good man who won't let these creeps scare him off. The whole plot / back story is refreshingly uncomplicated and easy to follow.The superior acting ensemble is almost universally male, and even Liz, played by the lovely Anne Francis, is rather tomboyish. The only true weak link is John Ericson as Liz's brother Pete; this guy looks like he couldn't change his facial expression if his life depended on it. But Tracy is a fun hero, especially when Macreedy is able to manhandle Coley without the use of two arms. There are standout moments from such character players as Walter Brennan, as the town doctor who implores his fellow citizens to do the right thing, and Dean Jagger, as the pathetic yet not entirely unsympathetic local sheriff.Very fine entertainment, starting with its energetic opening credits sequence, that runs a tidy 82 minutes, with no filler to bloat its length.Eight out of 10.

I've always been intrigued by this film but never saw it until December 2014 when I was able to see it in high definition and widescreen. It turns out to be a simple but effective story of a man trapped in a hick town by a bunch of townsfolk who are all more or less implicated in the murder of a Japanese-American man just after Pearl Harbour. A good cast with some tense moments – shorter and simpler than I imagined. The early cinemascope format makes the best of the train sweeping in and of the rocky scenery in the desert around the town but as most of the picture is set in either a garage, hotel lobby or sheriffs office it is rather wasted. Fairly enjoyable – a sort of 'Noir Western'.