a story that never gets old
by Douglas Messerli
W.
R. Burnett and William Wister Haines (screenplay, based on a play by Bartlett
Cormack), John Cromwell (director, with uncredited work by Nicholas Ray, Tay
Garnett, Sherman Todd and Mel Ferrer) The
Racket / 1951
The hitch is that the young mentor of
McQuigg, Bob Johnson (William Talman) publishes his name as the arresting
officer, thus inviting the gangsters to do him in as well, Although Scalon’s
goons fail to hit him at home, Scanlon does him in at the police station, which
finally allows McQuigg to take down Scanlon in an embroidered and rather clumsy
plot maneuver which ends the film.
The real fun of this film, accordingly,
is not the narrative but the noir cinematic sequences (the film contains a
wonderful chase scene and a train-side crash) and the acting. Ryan as Scanlon
is particularly good in his smug and unrepentant love of his evil ways. But
Mitchum, although given a less flashy role, is equally adept in his high-scrupled
refusals to give into the local corruption of fellow officer Sergeant Turk
(William Conrad) and District Attorney
Mortimer X. Welch (Collins), and his wry maneuvers around their illegal
legalities is a delight to watch.
The smoky-voiced Scott as Irene Hayes
sings a lovely torch song and pretends to be a hard-boiled floozy before giving
in to the inexplicable charms of the movie’s only true innocent, Dave Ames
(Robert Hutton).
And then, there is a memorable scene
between Joe Scanlon and Booking Sgt. Sullivan (Walter Baldwin) who comically
demands Joe stop beating up on the police before pushing him into the camera’s
gaze to “look at the birdie.”
During the run of the film, McQuigg has
witnessed the near-murder of his own wife, has fought it out with a gangster on
a roof top who falls to his death, and seen the shooting of his favorite young
police officer and Scanlon, to say nothing of the murders and beatings that
Scanlon himself has accomplished. No one in this Midwestern paradise seems to
be safe. And the good guys remain underpaid and lonely. If the tough gall Hayes
has been redeemed, we can only wonder what she will have to face with her
clueless new lover news reporter. At least her bad boy former lover, Joe
Scanlon, could always depend upon his brother to get him out of scrapes—while
providing him with university diplomas, a bit like the later “godfather” groomed
Michael Corleone.
In short, “the racket” has not been
destroyed at film’s end, but rather will simply operate, in the future, more
quietly and surely more efficiently—like the way that corruption on all levels
functions today. And, in that sense, perhaps The Racket, despite its old-fashioned story, will never get truly
old.
Los Angeles, May
15, 2016
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