Review of Bad Day at Black Rock

Less is more is a maxim that most directors should eschew and here John Sturges gives an object lesson in just that with this moody, suspenseful tale of seedy smalltown violence and racism, brought to light by avenging angel Spencer Tracy. Sturges cleverly plays the first two thirds of the film in blazing colour-soaked sunshine, as if to say that the appearance of normality often hides an ugly undercurrent, as Tracy's innocent goodwill - trip turns into a one - man mission to either redeem those of the townsfolk with a scrap of conscience left (the Walter Brennan, John Ericson and Dean Jagger characters) or physically rage against and ultimately vanquish the irredeemable elements (Ernst Borgnine and Robert Ryan). The good versus evil battle is outlined with the physically handicapped and hopelessly outnumbered Tracy character seemingly doomed against the sinister, swaggering, physically domineering characters of Ryan (when was he not great in his evocation of downright orneriness), Borgnine (until Spence dispatches him with some aplomb in their justly famous bar-room fight scene) and especially Lee Marvin who really does seem like "the daddy" until he meets literally face on undertaker Brennan's spade in the prelude to Tracy's escape. The cinematography is great, you can just feel the sweat oozing from the characters' pores and the symbolism of the train which both announces and then dissipates the tension was probably not lost on Hitchcock when working out the denouement of "North by Northwest" some years later. But of course it's Tracy who transcends everything with his portrayal of an everyday man confronted by petty evil and who decides not to turn the other cheek when the option to run away seems best. Perhaps there are echoes here of the contrasting responses to a similar victimisation of innocent foreigners then running high in Hollywood as McCarthyism took hold. As the old saying has it, for evil to prosper it only requires good men to do nothing.