He Ran All the Way (1951)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

A Masterpiece!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

My ultimate wish is that this film be released on DVD. If not for anything but a tribute to the genius of John Garfield. Nick Robey (Garfield) and his cohort in crime botch a robbery. The title is from the fact that he has to keep ahead of being arrested by the police. He meets Shelley Winters is who that falls in love with him. But he uses her to plot his escape. The action is fast-paced and the ending is an enigma or a prophecy. John Garfield had all intentions of continuing his film career despite his being investigated by the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the 1950's which blacklisted many film actors, directors, and writers. In fact, because Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted, his screenplay for this film went uncredited. Sadly to say also, perhaps because of the HUAC, Garfield died a year after this film's release. But he left us with his greatest masterpiece.

While watching this movie, for the first time, I thought I saw John Wayne and Gary Crosby in two crowd scenes. Here they are;Wayne walking with a women in the scene where Garfield is about to get in line at the swimming pool. Gary Crosby,sitting on a bench in the men's locker room when Garfield is looking for the locker to change into his swimming trunks. You have to look fast,especially for John Wayne, he was the tallest man in the crowd scene.Any one else notice this? Any information about the filming locations would be helpful, was raised in L.A. and it appears many scenes are long gone, the 'plunge' was near Santa Monica or Venice,recall that Pacific Electric Red Cars used to take passengers there and the 'plunge' used sea-water. The apartment looked like the Bunker Hill area.Street car bells could be heard in the apartment scenes.

Pretty decent cast -- John Garfield, Wallace Ford, Selena Royle -- but the film is no more than routine. Garfield is a gangster who has just committed a payroll robbery. On the run, he takes refuge in the working-class apartment of a girl he just met, Shelley Winters, and her family -- Mom, Pop, and kid brother. His identity is discovered by the family and he quietly takes them hostage, holding a snub-nosed .38 on them. But what's he going to do with them? How is he supposed to get away with the dragnet out for him? Mom and Pop are quietly repulsed by him, but Winters is attracted and evidently spends the night with him, intending to accompany him on his getaway. He sends her out to buy a car with part of the payroll money but comes to believe she didn't buy the car. Instead, she's betrayed him to the police. In the end, she's forced to shoot him at the doorway to the apartment house. He looks surprised, says, "You never had no love for me," stumbles out the door, only to discover before he collapses that she'd been true to her word. There sits the car. And Garfield plops into the rain-filled gutter.Mostly -- throughout the movie -- they talk. Then they talk more. Then they go on talking more. Garfield's character emerges as embittered and cynical, self pitying, angry at those who have betrayed him all through his life, beginning with his mother.But he's not very smart. He allows the family to go out in order to show up at work or run errands, as long as he has one member at home for a hostage. While the rest are absent, in a burst of generosity and hope, he has an elaborate turkey dinner prepared. When they return, he beams with pride and tells them to dig in. But they remain silent, and Mom produces some left-over stew, which they proceed to spoon out without enthusiasm. "I don't get it," says Garfield. "What's the mattah with the toikey? Ga head -- cahve it up." Pop tells him solemnly, "This is our dinner. The turkey is YOUR dinner." Garfield is dumbfounded. "Huh? Oh -- I GET IT." (Finally.) It could easily have been a radio play, still popular at the time (1951) or a live TV show from Playhouse 90. The budget is low and the story skeletal. Usually they find room for remarks about how this is going to be the hottest day of the year or something. Here the patter is limited to remarks about the future, about good character, about responsibility, and they lead nowhere.I usually find John Garfield's performances likable -- another lower-middle-class guy from New York -- but never magnetic. Shelley Winters usually gets panned but I don't know why. She's never bad, and often better than the script calls for.

This strange entry in the noir canon features John Garfield delivering a sweaty, paranoid performance as a small-time crook who shoots a cop during a heist gone bad and then holes up with the family of a girl he meets and desperately latches himself on to (Shelley Winters). He virtually takes the family hostage, threatening to kill whichever member he has with him at the time if any of the other members try to seek help. Meanwhile, a game of patriarchal dominance begins between Garfield and the father, whose sense of masculinity is threatened by his inability to help his family. It all leads to a showdown in the street as Garfield attempts to run away with Winters, who may or may not have genuine feelings for him."He Ran All the Way" is more about the dynamics of family than anything else. In the first scene, we see what kind of home life Garfield's character comes from. His blowsy mom (played divinely by Gladys George, who has far too little screen time) verbally and physically abuses him, and then refuses to come to his aid later on when he's in trouble. As a result, Garfield tries to make a sort of surrogate family of the one he's taken hostage, attempting to establish a twisted kind of domestic tranquility, with himself as father figure. The most unsettling scene transpires at a family dinner, when Garfield forces the family at gunpoint to eat the meal he's prepared for them.Throughout the film, Garfield acts with a desperate intensity you can practically smell. Unlike all of those cooler than cool crooks who populate the worlds of other noir films, Garfield is lousy as a criminal; his own paranoia and panic give him away at moments when he otherwise wouldn't be in any danger. Shelley Winters plays his love interest as a dowdy mope, the second time that year (see "A Place in the Sun") she played a frump who meets a good-looking lad and then regrets it. Wallace Ford and Selena Royle do the honors as mom and dad."He Ran All the Way" is not one of the more ambitious entries in the noir cycle, but like so many of the lurid, low-budget films that came out around this fertile period in cinema history, it has fascinating undertones that belie its simple plot.With crisp photography by James Wong Howe and a propulsive, sensational score by that old pro Franz Waxman.Grade: A-