Several friends accuse me of going down rabbit holes too often, hence my scattered, random, unfocused life.
One of the films I was considering for the post “Twenty-Five Indispensable Movies For Understanding American Culture” is “Bad Day at Black Rock,” a strange, almost surreal 1955 drama directed by John Sturgis, who loved ensemble casts (“The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape” were two of his best.) I had watched the film a few times, first as a teenager, and found it vaguely disturbing each time. When the movie didn’t make the cut, I decided to watch it again. It still is disturbing.
The movie is often called a “neo-Western.” I never thought of it as a Western (and you know me and Westerns) but finally I see the point. It takes place in the West, the town looks like one of the ramshackle collections of run-down buildings I associate with Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, and the plot could have easily been transferred to the 1880s with Randolph Scott as the protagonist. A stranger comes to a California desert town on a train that almost never stops there, and everyone starts acting paranoid. Obviously the residents have a dark secret. What is it?
Instead of Randolph Scott we have Spencer Tracy playing the stranger, a World War II veteran with a disabled arm. It’s late 1945, and he has come on a mission of kindness and respect: the father of a young soldier who saved his life and died in the process lives nearby (or at least that’s what he thought) and the stranger, named John Macreedy, wants to give the father the soldier’s medal of valor in person. Tracy never was in a Western, but he was used to playing idealists with a mission of principle. “Bad Day at Black Rock” pits him against an all-star team of sinister villains (Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine) and conflicted “I don’t want to get involved” weenies with guilty consciences (Walter Brennan, the town doctor, and Dean Jagger, the weak and alcoholic sheriff). The movie gives off a weird, unrealistic vibe similar to “High Noon,” though in this movie the good guy comes to town on the train, he is outnumbered by the villains, and is a bit more successful, in the end, in convincing some residents with consciences to help him.
I don’t want to give you more plot details; one of the reasons the film works is that the audience is so slowly let in on the conspiracy afoot. There are these ethics and cultural lessons on display, however:
1. “Bad Day” was the first film to confront the issue of the American mistreatment of Japanese Americans in response to Pearl Harbor, though it is done in a deliberately indirect way.
2. A harsh lesson of the film is that hate, frustration and patriotism can turn good people into monsters.
3. The ravages of conscience are prominently on display. This is how secrets get exposed and conspiracies fall apart.
4. It’s a lesson taught in so many movies but still an important one: a single bold soul willing to do the right thing at personal risk can change anything, because he or she can stiffen the resolve of the less intrepid who witness the act. Or, in the alternative, the bold one gets crushed.
5. Alcohol has fueled so many tragedies and tales of destruction in America, it is amazing to me that anyone paying attention calls Prohibition anything but a noble effort to fix a problem gone horribly wrong.
6. American anger and resentment against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and the excesses it spawned, should be taught in schools, and if that is too much to ask (you know, like teaching students to read), then at least show them “Bad Day at Black Rock.”
Ethics Alarms 