Harry Belafonte Takes out the Classic Film Noir era, Wisely
DIRECTED BY ROBERT WISE/1959
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: JANUARY 9, 2024/KL STUDIO CLASSICS
The odds against Odds Against Tomorrow could not have been good. No doubt a real firebrand when it hit in 1959, the crime yarn is highly indicative of just how painfully Hollywood had outgrown the old Hays Code of the early 1930s. A good number of socially minded dramas of the day were bursting to shepherd numerous issues that were (and still are) in need of blunt discourse. For decades, filmmakers had become quite adept at talking ‘round and ‘round specifics when talking about things that were too real for comfort.
Such is not the case for Odds Against Tomorrow. At all. Produced and shepherded to the screen by the film’s star, actor/musician/activist Harry Belafonte via his newly established HarBel Productions, the film fires defiantly as a confrontational shot across the bow into a repressive Caucasian-led American culture of the time. Here’s a genre they’re comfortable with populated with characters that they were not. Regrettably, the ultimate anti-hatred message still needs to be stated.
The film’s brazen approach carries through behind the scenes. Written primarily by blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky (with minor additions by co-credited writer Nelson Godding), Odds Against Tomorrow outpaces Kirk Douglas’ Spartacus in its employment (though secretive it had to be then) of a member of the Hollywood Ten, all of whom served prison time for refusing to renounce their socialist values. Though initially not credited for fear of exposure, Polonsky’s name was restored to the opening titles decades later, and properly appears on the beautiful Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
Elsewhere on the disc, Belafonte tells an interviewer that while his musical career afforded him the chance to make the leap to movies, acting was always his first love. The claim is easily backed up by his performance as the desperate Johnny Ingram. Rarely has any actor in any film had more fire in their eyes than Belafonte does at numerous points throughout this picture. Fully embodying the unstable club musician with a serious gambling problem that’s gotten him in big trouble, Belafonte makes what they call an indelible mark. When he’s presented with a high risk/high reward bank heist by personable old acquaintance David Burke (Ed Begley, excellent), he feels has no choice but to take part.
Things get murky within the cadre of aspiring crooks when a previous theif who’s done hard time is brought on board. Robert Ryan plays the world-weary key character, Earl Slater, with such convincing racist gusto that today he just might’ve run of risk of being cancelled. Slater vehemently objects to Ingram being part of the team because he’s Black, but realizes he’s in no position to opt out. Ingram, while more nuanced in his inner hatred, has uncomfortably much in common with Slater. Not only does the story ask whether these guys can pull off their robbery as meticulously planned, it asks whether they can survive one another.
Hired to helm the film is the great Robert Wise, who’s resume is packed with a diverse array of highly regarded films in numerous genres, including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), The Haunting (1963), West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965), The Sand Pebbles (1966), and The Andromeda Strain (1971). Though many consider Wise a highly skilled utilitarian filmmaker rather than an auteur, the notion to consider his work collectively through a lens of social justice typically isn’t ever done. Yet, even a cursory closer look at the themes and attitudes present in his vast filmography reveals that HarBel did in fact choose its director for this flagship project quite aptly.
Odds Against Tomorrow stands tall as a vitally important film of its era for several reasons, particularly for a crime genre Noir at that late phase of the game. Wise, though, implemented some dynamically subtle techniques that aesthetically set it apart. Not the least of these is his careful choice to shoot certain street scenes with infra-red film, resulting in a slightly less realistic perception of the world. The editing is also kinetic and sometimes brilliantly timed. When Ryan’s character definitively shows his true colors by dropping the n-word, the moment lands like a bomb. And then, Boom- cut. In moments such as this we’re reminded that film editors are in fact artists- artist of time– and, specifically to Odds Against Tomorrow, that Wise was once one of the top artists of time in the business.
Throughout the wealth of bonus features included on the disc, we are reassured several different times that actor Robert Ryan was nothing like his character in the film. Seeing just how effectively he plays the vile down on his luck racist Earl Slater, the testimony to his real-life character (Belafonte testifies that Ryan was a major supporter of Dr. King and the civil rights movement) is appreciated, particularly in today’s social climate.
The bonus features menu offers two different vintage post screening Q&A sessions, both presented by Eddie Muller’s Film Noir Foundation. The first, from August 1, 2009, and held at The Music Box Theater in Chicago, is a chat with the late Harry Belafonte himself. Belafonte is aglow for this hour-long session, happily answering every question in impressive and honest detail. He speaks about how this was his first film, an opportunity he forged on the strength of his outstanding music career. He formed HarBel Productions and licensed the 1957 source novel of the same title by William P. McGivern. Belafonte had no qualms about drastically changing the book’s ending, among other things, to better suit the points he wanted the picture to make. In so doing, we get not only a more ferocious picture, but a more honest one.
The other post screening Q&A is with actress Kim Hamilton, who played Belafonte’s character’s wife in Odds Against Tomorrow, and held in Los Angeles on April 13, 2007. Although Hamilton’s session is split up into two separate menu items (“Parts 1 & 2”), they add up to far less than the hour that Belafonte’s does. Still, Hamilton is terrific as she discusses being discovered to appear in the film, not becoming the major movie star that she assumed the film would make her, and her other work, including 1960’s The Leech Woman. Unfortunately, the video camera recording the event is using its onboard microphone, resulting in lots of unprofessional camera noise. Everything said is discernible, but the bumping and thumping sounds are too bad.
While Film Noir purists (such as I) may take pause with this disc’s frequent classification of Odds Against Tomorrow as Noir, though it’s entirely worth noting that it’s the Noir Foundation itself that’s doing such. Yes, it’s 1959 release date places it just beyond the commonly considered end of the Film Noir classic era, 1958’s Touch of Evil. But considering that Odds Against Tomorrow not only had to be into creative development a year earlier, but it also actively goes bleak and even atomic (ala 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly). That, frankly, is enough for me to slightly revise my own Noir endpoint. In fact, Odds Against Tomorrow stands as an ideal capper to the story of movies in the 1950s– cinema’s most tension-filled decade, only occasionally giving way to the kind of explosive finality that would conclude so many later films.
Additionally, we get a newly recorded audio commentary track by author/film historian Alan K. Rode. Rode does a remarkable job of guiding us through Odds Against Tomorrow, covering all the important bases while not going dry or dull. Rode seems to truly understand not only the significance of the picture, but that precisely because of that significance, he doesn’t need to “oversell” as too many other commentators too often do. Finally, Kino has included the film’s theatrical trailer.
Scorching without coming off as a “message movie”, Odds Against Tomorrow beats the great odds against it thanks to its uncompromising screenplay, and full-on dedication by its makers. It’s the actors, however, that take the movie across the finish line. Women admittedly don’t get a lot to do in this one, but the few scenes of Shelley Winters as Slater’s emasculating benefactor and Film Noir queen Gloria Grahame burning up the place in a black brassiere cannot be ignored. Belafonte, like his character, saw the risks and knew he had to make his move. Today, in playing the Odds Against Tomorrow Blu-ray, we are the big winners.