A surprisingly frank and morally complex film noir released immediately post-WWII.
Van Heflin plays a man who ratted out some fellow soldiers in a Nazi POW camp; Robert Ryan is one of the survivors who comes to seek vengeance on Heflin after they've all returned to the States and have spent time rebuilding their lives. The movie poses difficult questions, much more difficult ones than movies of its kind normally did, and it doesn't let itself off easy by making either Heflin nor Ryan all good or all bad. One of the most daring elements of the film is its suggestion that Heflin is deserving of forgiveness, because the codes of conduct that govern men in the theater of war are different from those that govern us in our day-to-day lives. That maybe doesn't seem like a daring thing to say now, but at the time it would have been.
Heflin and Ryan are both terrific; Ryan is one of my favorite film noir actors. But the women in the film make quite an impression, and no wonder given that two of them are played by Janet Leigh (as Heflin's wife) and Mary Astor (as a world-weary good-time gal who takes Heflin under her protective wing). If the mens' world -- both at war and at home -- is one of violence and revenge, it's the women who act as the voice of reason and sanity, trying to impose a sense of stability amid the chaos.
A really, really good movie.
Grade: A
Van Heflin plays a man who ratted out some fellow soldiers in a Nazi POW camp; Robert Ryan is one of the survivors who comes to seek vengeance on Heflin after they've all returned to the States and have spent time rebuilding their lives. The movie poses difficult questions, much more difficult ones than movies of its kind normally did, and it doesn't let itself off easy by making either Heflin nor Ryan all good or all bad. One of the most daring elements of the film is its suggestion that Heflin is deserving of forgiveness, because the codes of conduct that govern men in the theater of war are different from those that govern us in our day-to-day lives. That maybe doesn't seem like a daring thing to say now, but at the time it would have been.
Heflin and Ryan are both terrific; Ryan is one of my favorite film noir actors. But the women in the film make quite an impression, and no wonder given that two of them are played by Janet Leigh (as Heflin's wife) and Mary Astor (as a world-weary good-time gal who takes Heflin under her protective wing). If the mens' world -- both at war and at home -- is one of violence and revenge, it's the women who act as the voice of reason and sanity, trying to impose a sense of stability amid the chaos.
A really, really good movie.
Grade: A