Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

An Exercise In Nonsense

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

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.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) was directed by John Sturges. Sturges specialized in Westerns, especially Grade B Westerns, set in the Old West. This film--set in 1945--was Sturges' foray into the New West, but it didn't really work out that way.In this movie, Sturges simply transfers the action 70 years ahead, but the plot is the same. First of all, Black Rock is portrayed as a city to which progress has never come. So, the telephones don't work, and the characters must rely on the telegraph station. They ride cars instead of horses, but that's about it in terms of technological advances.Also, Sturges uses a classic Western theme--the protagonist just returned from war. (For example, John Wayne just home from the Civil War in "The Searchers.") The protagonist, John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) is just back from WW II. What's different--and excellent--about this movie is that Spencer Tracy was a superb actor, and Sturges gives him plenty of screen time to show us his talents. Another interesting highlight is that Macreedy is missing his left arm. That's a part for a great actor. In fact, someone has written that the missing arm was what made the character interesting enough for Spencer Tracy to agree to portray him.All the rest of the supporting cast is pretty standard Western movie talent--Robert Ryan, Walter Brennan, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine. They all portray bad guys and not-so-bad guys. The only woman in the film is played by Anne Francis. She was a pretty talented actor, but she doesn't belong in this movie. It's obvious that director Sturges thought he needed at least one woman in the film, and he picked Francis. We are to understand that she is Robert Ryan's girlfriend. So, the girlfriend of a bad guy has to be either a bad woman or terribly naive. Francis' role was so feeble that I couldn't tell which she was supposed to be.We saw this film at Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre, as part of an Ernest Borgnine retrospective. It will work well on the small screen, because Black Rock is a set, not a real city, and the mountain scenery looks painted.If you want to see a pretty good Western, with a truly great star, this is the film for you. It begins one day with the streamlined passenger train coming into Black Rock, and it ends the next day with the streamlined passenger train leaving Black Rock . The shots of the train are fabulous.

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

This is one of the all time classics with a great plot and the certain twists and turns it takes you on wondering if Spencers character is going to get out of town alive or not and where everyone clicks just right having movie greats like Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and of course Spencer Tracy you can't really say anything bad about this movie other than the fight scene between Ernest Borgnine and Spencer Tracy where he does his judo throw on Ernest is such a terrible job as a double standing in. Every time I see that part of the movie I want to find out how that got by the director. The guy was like more slender and like a foot taller and he didn't even look anything like Spencer Tracy. I always wonder how things like that get by unnoticed in the great Hollywood? Other than that great movie. Ben the critic