One of the great paradoxes of American history is the fact that Hollywood in the 1950s – an era usually associated with Cold War hysteria, McCarthy's witch hunts, the demonisation of any nonconformist thought, and Hollywood blacklists – brought forth many great, groundbreaking films that actually challenged the self-righteous view of the USA as the greatest nation in the world. Those films exposed some dark, unflattering truths about American society by pointing towards some burning problems previously swept under the carpet. One of those problems was, of course, racism as the most visible violation of noble American ideas about equal rights for all of its citizens. Racism was also responsible for the most shameful episode in the American involvement in WWII – the forced internment of Japanese Americans. One of the first Hollywood films to speak about this embarrassing issue was Bad Day at Black Rock, a 1955 thriller directed by John Sturges.
The film begins in 1945, a few months after the end of WWII. Black Rock is a small Arizona town, so small and insignificant that the passenger train never stops there. When it stops, it is big news, especially when the passenger stepping off is a mysterious one-armed stranger named McCreedy (played by Spencer Tracy). McCreedy's presence alone is enough to cause suspicion among the townspeople and open animosity from local cowboy goons. McCreedy would earn even more hostility when he starts inquiring about a Japanese farmer who used to live in Black Rock before the war. Reno Smith (played by Robert Ryan), a rich farmer and the only real authority in town, is especially upset over the stranger's inquiry. McCreedy is told that the Japanese farmer was "relocated" after the war, but he suspects something more sinister and that some townspeople, including Smith, had something to do with it. His suspicions are validated when he realises that Smith and his goons do not want him to leave Black Rock alive.
Bad Day at Black Rock is often referred to as a companion piece to High Noon. Those two films have many things in common – a setting in a small Western town, populated with hypocrites and cowards; a lone protagonist who would risk his life over noble principles; suspense created with the certainty of an inevitable showdown; and a relatively short length. Unfortunately, John Sturges could hardly compete with the directorial skills of Fred Zinnemann, while screenwriter Don McGuire could not repeat the complexity of Carl Foreman's High Noon script and its characters. Bad Day at Black Rock looks promising in the beginning, though. Sturges withholds information from the viewers. When McCreedy steps off the train, dressed in black, his presence is menacing and his motives unclear. Spencer Tracy excels in playing this character by slowly building our confidence with grace, dignity, intelligence, and confidence. It is a real pleasure watching how Tracy outsmarts those who want to trick him and how he handles those who want to intimidate him. By showing the increasingly hostile reaction of people like Smith and always reminding us of the hopelessness of McCreedy's situation, Sturges slowly builds the suspense. Unfortunately, it all begins to fall apart in the second part of the film, when the mystery is revealed and all sides begin preparations for the inevitable final conflict. Instead of action, we are given sermons, and McCreedy, who is shown as a man who can take care of himself, actually talks his way out of a bad situation. Some of the lines spoken by characters are powerful, but unrealistic, hardly expected from people who spent all their lives as ordinary, blue-collar inhabitants in small desert towns. That is especially so with the character of Smith, played by Robert Ryan, who seems somewhat too refined for a simple redneck bigot. The final showdown is also ruined by an unnecessary melodramatic plot twist.
Perhaps the worst flaw of Bad Day at Black Rock is the lack of courage in handling the whole embarrassing affair with Japanese Americans in WWII. Don McGuire uses the euphemism of "relocation" for an event that was actually nothing less than state-sponsored ethnic cleansing (Interestingly enough, when Croatian and Serbian intellectuals in the early 1990s propagated ethnic cleansing as the only solution to the Yugoslav crisis, they also used a euphemism called "humane resettlement"). Racism, which was the prime motivating factor of such an event, is never attributed to the system itself; instead, racism and bigotry are something that should be attributed only to a few rotten individuals like Smith. The general population, which gave tacit support to ethnic cleansings and holocausts of this world, either by looking the other way or enjoying the fruits of someone else's dirty work, is actually forgiven in this film. McGuire, on the other hand, redeems himself by using this opportunity to expose a rarely seen economic motivation for racial, ethnic, and religious hatred – Smith did what he did because he wanted someone else's property. What is really sad about this film is the fact that the events portrayed in it do not belong to the dark pages of history – Bad Day at Black Rock can still teach us a lot about the world we still live in.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on February 4th 2000)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/14554-bad-day-at-black-rock Critic: AA
