159: The Phenix City Story

If I were hard-pressed to choose a favorite film genre (something more specific than comedy or drama), I’d probably settle on film noir.  There’s something about femme fatales and streetwise fast-talking thugs that just makes me love the movies even more every time I see them.  But while these elements come to mind when anyone utters the term “film noir,” it can be a genre that is difficult to define.  Some historians argue over the “first true noir” as if pinpointing one film makes the progression of the category easier to chart.  Like many, I’d say that The Maltese Falcon (1941) is probably the film which represents a clear change in the approach and attitude of the filmmakers toward their material, shading over to the dark side, but many of these themes were being touched upon as early as the late 1920s in both Hollywood and around the world.  In any case, noir fascinates me as perhaps the very first international film movement.

            American directors barrowed from techniques displayed by many of the German filmmakers who were escaping the brutalities of the Third Reich, and who were bringing their talents stateside.  The themes in the resulting films reflected the darkening international ethos, and when the films were shown in France their critics noted these thematic and stylistic shades.  Eventually many of the critics who noted these changes went on to make some brilliant and dark films of their own as leaders of the French New Wave movement.  As such, we as retrospective film lovers can see the connection between films like Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967).  Another thing I love about noir is that it constantly reinvents itself.  Some think of it as a dead genre, but many of the finest films of the last 20 years [The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Dark City (1998)] have been, at their core, noirs.

            Noir is also a genre that can easily be made to fit with others.  Coinciding with the first heyday of noir was the wave of political dramas which occupied the ten years following WWII.  At the tail end of that trend was The Phenix City Story (1955) directed by Phil Karlson, a film which pairs the two brilliantly.  Centering on corruption in the Georgia/Alabama border town of Phenix City, the film’s first 15 minutes play as a television interview of those individuals who lived through this true story.  To be perfectly honest, I found that this initial portion of the film leaves much to be desired, but admittedly it probably played well in 1955, when audiences began to get wise to the liberties that the phrase “based on a true story” allowed. 

            After the narrative kicks in the true attributes of the film begin to shine, as a cast of assorted characters is introduced.  What makes these initial scenes work is that they don’t clearly illustrate to the audience if the people they introduce are protagonists or villains.  This is a smart film that for its era stands out, as it gives its viewers time to make their own decisions about the people of Phenix City.  We are introduced to both lawyers and crooks, but at the outset they are amicable.  The girl who deals black jack at the backroom club casino seems to be well-intentioned, but who knows?  These aren’t people who wrestle with morality; so much as they are people who take the world at face value.  Some are out for profit, and some are simply trying to survive, to keep their noses above the stench of corruption.

            Things are calm until the son (Richard Kiley) of a local attorney (John McIntire) returns home from prosecuting war crimes in Germany.  He wants to go into practice with his father, but his wife (Lenka Peterson) is worried about raising their children amongst the corruption and filth of the town.  Her apprehensions seemed to be justified when Kiley’s character is drawn into a fight with the henchmen of the local crime syndicate.  He pressures his father into joining the citizens committed to defeating the mob politically, but tensions within the family threaten to rip his own marriage apart.  As the violence throughout the city escalates these tensions flare, especially after threats are made against the young children.

The 1001 text points out that this was one of the most brutal crime dramas of its time, pushing the boundaries of the Hays regulation.  While it indeed stretches these limits, it’s certainly nothing modern audiences would scoff at.  But in context this movie was revolutionary in this respect and in its approach to depiction of life in the post-war south.  Racial attitudes of the time are prevalent, and although the film appears to denounce these positions, it doesn’t outright condemn them.  This is ironic as Kiley’s character, John Patterson, in actuality went on to win the Governorship of Alabama on a Jim Crow ticket.  Aside from that sad truth, this is an excellent movie that pits one man against the force of the mob, his single cry galvanizing the masses to one last showdown against corruption.  

Grade: 3 Hats Off