Ruthless Robinson - Black Tuesday (1954), Eureka Masters of Cinema #300

 

I’ve got those Black Tuesday blues

Black Tuesday, Black Tuesday,

I pray for that day to never come…

That’s when my life on this earth will be done.

 

There’s a certain formula to noir, even though only the French had codified the form at this point, yet the use of these elements doesn’t preclude the possibilities of refining the components and making a film that both engages and leaves the jaded modern viewer impressed and not a little shocked. So it is with Hugo Fregonese’s Black Tuesday which is now being released in a crystal clear 4k transfer from those fabulous folk at Eureka. Not being familiar with the work of this much travelled Argentinian director I have to conclude on this evidence at least that he is indeed a master of cinema. I want to see more and could have seen more at Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato in 2022 when a retrospective of his work clashed with my usual pursuit of silent film restorations.

 

The film is the last of the much-travelled Fregonese’s in Hollywood and represents the darkest of takes on the nature of crime and humanity’s rules of survival. As critic and co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato Ehsan Khoshbakht, who programmed the retrospective says, it has the biggest “kick” of the director’s films in terms of morality and nihilism. Noir was well populated with anti-heroes but few as genuinely frightening as Edward G. Robinson’s Canelli whose logic still stands in an era of global anti-truth and burgeoning conflicts. Might is right has never changed, and we’re about to see this creed tested again over the next few years.

 

For Fregonese escape was a way of life for his characters, it certainly was for him based on his field of operations and, much as we feel the flight or flight in 2024, there’s little comfort to be offered in Black Tuesday even as we’re engaged in the taught narrative for the get-go.

 

Edward G Robinson

The opening is as stylish show of flair that marks this mid-budget film out from most of its peers as we enter the cells of condemned men all counting down the days and in some cases hours until their fate. One man, Sylvester (Don Blackman) starts tapping out a rhythm on his stool and singing a plaintive song about Black Tuesday, the traditional day for public executions in the USA and as his words roll out the camera tracks across the faces of the men. Canelli prowls his cage like a lion full of hate and guile, still looking for any chance, then the cool and collected Manning (Peter Graves) still working on an intricate match-stick model of a bridge where possibly he has stashed $200,000 of stolen money) and then onto one prisoner who cannot stand the music and its reminder of his impending fate.

 

They all appear doomed and yet, the scene shifts to a couple sitting outside the prison in a car, Canelli’s lady friend Hatti (Jean Parker) and one of his men, who are watching one of the prison guards Norris (James Bell) being dropped off by his daughter Ellen (Sylvia Findley). At the end of the day when the guard gets home he finds Hatti sitting inside his house with an offer he simply can’t refuse if he wants to see his girl again. Once again the camera angles are ramped up to highlight Hatti’s measured menace and as Norris sits down in his chair there’s a cross-fade to the electric chair being prepared for Canelli and Manning a foreshadowing of the guard’s own fate as much as theirs.

 

The film had benefited enormously from restoration and has a distinctive look anyway. Kodak Tri-X film used for the first time in a feature film and, as it was much more sensitive to low light conditions without impacting film grain, it enabled high contrast and easier setups in terms of artificial lighting. It helped enable the dynamic use of deep focus and depth of field by cinematographer Stanley Cortez who worked on The Magnificent Ambersons and, the following year, Charles Laughton’s brilliant Night of the Hunter. He spans the gap between expressionism and noire here creating a crystal-clear view of the darkness at the heart of men.

 

Depth of feels: James Bell and Peter Graves 

So many shots are simply stunning especially when Canelli, in extreme close-up, is telling the prison guard Norris that if he wants to see his daughter alive again, he better co-operate. Norris’ face is shown in profile in focus with Manning’s in the neighbouring cell, both are in sharp focus heightening this crucial moment and Norris’ fearful distraction. Canelli’s cackle when he knows he has his man is genuinely chilling… the perfect meld of performance, lens and direction as a good man is brought down and the escape plan is on…

 

Then there is the night of the men’s execution with the scene a in a starkly lit room with the journalists and onlookers jostling for the best view of the death scene about to spark in front of them. They enter filmed from a low angle with the electric chair looming large in the opposite corner. Norris fulfils his part of the bargain by strapping a gun under a chair which Canelli’s man Joey (Warren Stevens the star to be of Forbidden Planet and hundreds of TV episodes), impersonating a newspaper man, retrieves it and launches the escape plan.

 

After a tense shoot out during which Manning is injured the men are picked up by a van and, after dropping off the other three from death row, more as a police distraction than a favour, Canelli arrives at the warehouse Hatti has prepared. They have brought the prison doctor (Vic Perrin) to tend to Manning as he and his $200,000 are very much part of Canelli’s plan. There’s also the prison chaplain Father Slocum (Milburn Stone) who more than anything is to provide a moral equivalence for the gang in the desperate hours to come. Norris’ daughter is also there along with Carson (Jack Kelly) the journalist replaced by Joey along with one of the prison guards, the one who really used to needle Canelli.

 

This stage of the film is even more intense than the first half as death hovers even closer to life than in death row as the gang are discovered and a siege begins. Canelli has no intention of surrender and starts to execute his hostages as the police close in. It’s the interactions between the “good” and the “bad” characters that keep the interest though, how can these men insist on other lives being worth less than their own? Is there no morality other than survival of the meanest and the basest of motives. The film pushes these questions to the absolute limit and the cast are universally up to the task.

 

First amongst these is, of course Robinson and for once the press puff was right in claiming this as the most ruthless Robinson of all time! His Canelli is not only believable but likeable in some moments, it’s like The Sopranos half a century earlier, business is business and ruthless is the way with apologies if the innocent just happen to get in the way.  

 

Eshan Khoshbakht describes Fregonese as “a master of creating claustrophobic spaces…” and the film with its sparse empty sound stages, unseen threat, sharp angles and extraordinary cinematography, is unpredictably engaging right to the end. I’m not surprised that the Nation Legion of Decency rated it “B” for “excessive brutality and low moral tone…” but the real horror is the amorality and not the manner of these deaths but their justification.

 

This is all typical of the director’s work as Khoshbakht points out, recalling the common themes from his Ritrovato notes including the constant self-justifications, the impact of their criminality on their motivation and the loneliness of the huge spaces in the film… these men are all islands with their past behaviours and future fortunes all inextricably and unavoidably linked. More than anything though, the physical escape is a reflection of their ongoing quest to be free of consequences and their inevitable demise: “escape as a way of life.”.

 

This set contains a highly informative video essay on Fregonese from the thoroughly well-researched Sheridan Hall, which explains his subject’s world-spanning career whilst putting this picture in the context of his other major works. It’s an essay that dovetails perfectly with Khoshbakht’s which is more centred on the film and you’re in safe hands with these two!

 

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Limited Edition (2000 copies) with O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a 2K scan of the 35mm fine grains
• A new audio commentary with film noir expert Sergio Angelini, host of the Tipping My Fedora podcast
• From Argentina to Hollywood a new interview with film historian Sheldon Hall on director Hugo Fregonese
• – No Escape another new video essay by Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
• An interview with critic and co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato Ehsan Khoshbakht covering the career of Hugo Fregonese
• Theatrical trailer
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Black Tuesday by critic Barry Forshaw and film writer Craig Ian Mann

 

You can order Black Tuesday direct from the Eureka website and do it quickly because the Limited Edition is only 2000 copies and I sense we’ll be seeing more of Hugo Fregonese’s work!