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Force of Evil
How to use the system. On the one hand, the film is about this, and on the other, it practises it in order to be what it is, albeit in a different way and with a different intention. Packaged as a noir gangster thriller, Force of Evil tells a tale of organised crime. For Polonsky, capitalism and criminality are twins. He suggests that this cosmos is hopeless and resistant. He manages to smuggle this view of things into Hollywood by adhering perfectly to the mythical iconography of gangster films and the narrative form of the noir series. Behind the scenes, however, he torpedoes every conceivable cliché, which infuriated the censors. Needless to say, the McCarthy-era ‘witch hunt’ did not leave a director like him unscathed. He did not make his next film until 21 years after Force of Evil. Brecht called such eliminations by the system ‘cold execution’. (H.T.)
Restored version from the UCLA Film & Television Archive