Hell on Frisco Bay

 

Frank Tuttle: Hell on Frisco Bay (US 1955).

Frank Tuttle: Hell on Frisco Bay (US 1955). Alan Ladd (Steve Rollins), Paul Stewart (Joe Lye), Edward G. Robinson (Victor Amato).

The Darkest Hour / La baia dell'inferno / Friscon alamaailma / Helvetti Friscon lahdella / Frisco Bay [Swedish title].
    US. Year of production: 1955. Year of copyright and general release: 1956. Director: Frank Tuttle. 99 min
    Sog.: from the novel The Darkest Hour (1955) by William McGivern. Scen.: Sydney Boehm, Martin Rackin. F.: John F. Seitz. M.: Folmar Blangsted. Scgf.: John Beckman. Mus.: Max Steiner.
    Int.: Alan Ladd (Steve Rollins), Edward G. Robinson (Victor Amato), Paul Stewart (Joe Lye), Joanne Dru (Marcia Rollins), William Demarest (Dan Bianco), Fay Wray (Kay Stanley), Perry Lopez (Mario Amato), Renata Vanni (Anna Amato), Rod Taylor (John Brodie Evans), Peter Hansen (detective Connors), Jayne Mansfield (ragazza al dance club).
    Prod.: George C. Bertholon, Alan Ladd per Jaguar Productions. DCP
    © 1956 Ladd Enterprises, Inc.
    Songs: "The Very Thought Of You" (comp. and lyr. Ray Noble, 1934) and "It Had To Be You" (comp. Isham Jones, lyr. Gus Kahn, 1924), sung by Joanne Dru in the nightclub (dubbed by Bonnie Lou Williams).
    US limited release: 31 Dec 1955, general release: 28 Jan 1956.
    Helsinki premiere: 27 July 1956, Rea, distributed by Warner Bros.
    Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato: Guns for Hire: Frank Tuttle vs. Stuart Heisler
    DCP from Warner Bros.
    E-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra.
    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 31 Aug 2020.

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "Following a five-year absence from Hollywood, his career sadly in decline, Tuttle returned with a tersely directed crime story. Alan Ladd (whose company produced the film) was responsible for this comeback, paying some of his dues to the man who made him a star. The script by Boehm and Rackin is hardly original but it is sensitively and sharply written, giving Tuttle the chance to focus in on the drama. As with Suspense, however, Tuttle took an unconventional approach by leaving most of the killing and the action off-screen. Steve, an ex-cop who has been jailed on charges of manslaughter, is released from San Quentin after five years (an allusion to Tuttle’s own situation?). His only concern is to find the guilty party. He heads straight to the fishing ports of San Francisco Bay – superbly shot on location in CinemaScope by John F. Seitz – where everything is controlled by Vic Amato, a crooked businessman and gangster who is in fact behind the murder for which Steve was charged. This is Edward G. Robinson’s film through and through. He crackles with amazing energy and makes the air thick with corruption. Vic manipulates the dock workers, many of whom are fellow Italian immigrants, and even gives the order to kill a member of his own family. He uses people’s weaknesses to push them into a corner, sucking them dry. When they are no longer useful, they are cast into the Bay. To Vic, people are little different from the fish. Conveying both charisma and evil, when he gives a statue of Christ an empty look in one scene, the depth of his bitterness and immorality is revealed. Tuttle brings the background dramas to the fore, which become the film’s main driving force: Vic’s relationship with his devout wife, and the redeeming connection between his assistant Joe, a conman with a heart, and the washed-up movie star he is in love with, played by Fay Wray. In A Cry in the Night, made a year later and again produced by Ladd, Tuttle would still show a sense of command and an ability to muster new ideas – but this is perhaps the last film of his in which every scene has the stamp of a master." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)

AA: The blacklisted director Frank Tuttle got to make this comeback film thanks to Alan Ladd whom he had groomed to stardom in This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key and Lucky Jordan.

Typically for a Bologna retrospective, we are following a director's progress from the silent days (Kid Boots, Bologna 2017) to the sound period, and finally to colour and CinemaScope.

There is a breath of fresh San Francisco bay air in the atmospheric WarnerColor cinematography by John B. Seitz, the veteran who had risen to prominence with Rex Ingram, become the DP of Paramount classics by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, and who on the last leg of his career worked regularly with Alan Ladd and Frank Tuttle. Learning to navigate in scope, Tuttle directs the action in long takes and reinvents visual dynamics in the elongated mise-en-scène.

Hell on Frisco Bay is a gangster film featuring a rogue cop interpreted by Ladd. The rogue cop cycle was prominent in the 1950s in films such as Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950), The Prowler (Joseph Losey, 1951), Detective Story (William Wyler, 1951), On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952), The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) and Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958).

The writer William P. McGivern was a specialist of the trend, covering corruption in big cities in novels that were filmed as Shield for Murder (Howard W. Koch, Edmond O'Brien, 1953), Rogue Cop (Roy Rowland, 1954), and, most famously, The Big Heat. Of the screenwriters, Sydney Boehm was a film noir expert, while Martin Rackin was an Alan Ladd regular who had also written The Enforcer for Bretaigne Windust and Raoul Walsh (1951), about Murder, Inc.

Alan Ladd plays the ex-cop Steve Rollins who is released from San Quentin Prison after five years, having been framed for manslaughter by the dockyard mafia boss Victor Amato. Without any official mandate he pursues the mob with single-minded fervour. Rollins's brutality and recklessness and his unflinching use of torture and coercion make him no different from the gangsters he is pursuing. "You really wanted to kill him".

Edward G. Robinson gives a great performance as Victor Amato. It is more than acting: he is in his element, he lives the part, he owns the place. "Severance pay" is an ominous expression when uttered by Amato. Observing Rollins's efficiency Amato offers to hire him as his right hand man as a replacement of the one who has failed.

It's a man's world, but it would be nothing without a woman in it. The emotionally challenged Steve refuses to communicate with his devout and loyal wife Marcia, whom he has shut completely off during his prison term.

Steve is aware of a one night stand of Marcia's during his absence, and that is reason enough for incommunicado. Steve calls her "unfaithful", but he should look in the mirror and think who is being even more unfaithful. On the other hand, Steve wants to protect Marcia, and that is a major reason why he does not want to be involved just now. "I don't want to get you in trouble".

Joanne Dru (who had been discovered to stardom by Howard Hawks and John Ford) gives a dignified performance as the night club singer Marcia. Other exciting female performers include Fay Wray, Tina Carver and Renata Vanni, and, in bit parts, the rising star Jayne Mansfield, and in a lovely casting coup, the Hollywood veteran Mae Marsh, who had started with Griffith (Intolerance) and who ended her film career in John Ford's stock company.

There was a half an hour delay in the screening (supposed to start at 9.15, it started at 9.45), and I missed the ending, needing to catch The Rickshaw Man. I managed to follow Hell on Frisco Bay until Steve's scenes with Bessie (Tina Carver).

A first rate DCP from Warner Bros.

Hell on Frisco Bay 2020: as I am writing these remarks post festum, "photos show eerie orange sky over California’s Bay Area as devastating wildfires rage." 10 Sep 2020. This photo is uncredited, but other photos in the article are credited to Burak Arik and Neal Waters, Anadoly Agency via Getty Images. Uazmi.com

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SYNOPSIS FROM AFI CATALOG ONLINE:

In San Francisco, former policeman Steve Rollins is released from San Quentin Prison, after serving a five year sentence for the manslaughter of Donato, a suspect who died shortly after being questioned by Steve.

Waiting for Steve at the prison gate is his friend, policeman Dan Bianco, and his wife Marcia, a nightclub singer with whom he has refused all contact since the trial.

After refusing to return home with Marcia, Steve tells Dan that he plans to find the men who framed him for the death of Donato. Steve begins by searching for fisherman Frank Ragoni, who contacted him in prison, claiming to know Donato’s killer. When Steve looks for Ragoni at the dockyards owned by racketeer Victor Amato, Hammy, one of Amato’s thugs, forces him to leave. No one Steve questions, including his parish priest, Monsignor La Rocca, has seen Ragoni recently.

After learning that Amato is forcing out the long-time elected dock leader, Lou Fiaschetti, Steve visits the older man and finds him dejected and afraid to discuss Ragoni. After Steve’s visit, Lou meets with Amato, but when he mentions Ragoni and Donato, he is “escorted” away, against his will by Hammy.

After renting a room in a boarding house, Steve stops by the apartment he once shared with Marcia to pick up his clothes, and accuses her of infidelity. She replies that after three years of not hearing from Steve, she was driven by loneliness into a short-lived affair with a musician at the nightclub where she performs. Although she says that is the only time she has been unfaithful, Steve refuses to forgive her.

Their conversation is interrupted by Hammy and Joe Lye, a scar-faced, even-tempered ex-convict who serves as Amato’s right-hand man. After ordering Steve to abandon his search for Ragoni, Hammy assaults Steve, but after Steve nearly strangles Hammy, the thugs leave.

Later, at Steve’s boarding house, Detective Connors, a corrupt policeman who works for Amato, offers Steve a job with the racketeer. When Steve refuses, Connors leaves after mentioning that Ragoni has been found murdered.

Steve then questions the widower Sebastian Pasmonick, who is Ragoni’s fishing boat partner, but Sebastian will not talk, explaining that he must protect his young son, Georgie. However, Georgie tells Steve that Amato’s nephew Mario made special arrangements for fisherman Brodie Evans to work with Ragoni the night he was killed. Believing that Brodie was probably Ragoni’s killer, Steve finds the weak-willed Mario at a nightclub and forces him to confirm that he sent Brodie to work with Ragoni.

When Lou’s dead body is found near the bay, Amato becomes angry at Hammy for killing the dock leader just before an election and fires him. Amato then offers his position to Steve, and when Steve refuses, Amato threatens to kill him if he continues his investigation. Outside his rooming house, Steve finds Dan waiting. While Dan explains that he is trying to convince Lt. Neville, Steve’s former boss, to look into Amato’s connection with recent killings, Hammy fires at Steve from a parked car. The shot misses, after which Dan shoots back, mortally wounding Hammy. Before dying, Hammy reveals that Brodie is staying with his girlfriend Bessie.

When Steve questions Bessie, she claims that she and Brodie broke up. Doubting Bessie’s claims that she is no longer in contact with Brodie, Steve follows her when she leaves her apartment and she leads him directly to Brodie. Steve then takes Brodie to the police station and, with Neville’s permission, Dan brings in Mario to be questioned alongside Brodie.

When Connors tells Amato that the police are holding his men, Amato orders his lawyer to post their bail. Because Amato believes that Mario is unreliable, having talked too much to Steve and to the police, Amato orders Joe to kill him and make it look like suicide. While Joe reluctantly carries out Amato’s orders, Amato, tired of his religious wife Anna, whom he calls “a walking rosary,” tries to seduce Joe’s girlfriend, the former film actress Kay Stanley. When Kay rejects him, Amato slaps her.

Joe, who has endured many insults from Amato about his scarred face and relationship with Kay, is deeply offended to learn that Amato abused Kay. He threatens to have Kay tell the police that she overheard Amato order Mario’s killing, unless Amato gives him respect and a partnership in the organization. Although he pretends to acquiesce, Amato later orders Connors to kill Joe and Kay.

After escaping Connors’ attack, Joe sends Kay to Steve’s rooming house to tell Steve that Amato ordered Joe to kill Mario and Donato. Although she offers to testify this in court, she fears encountering Connors at the police station, so Steve hides her in Marcia’s apartment.

Steve then tells the childless Anna, who loved Mario like a son, that Amato had him murdered. Grateful to learn that Mario did not take his own life and therefore can be buried in consecrated ground, Anna tells Steve that her husband is at the dockyard. Steve proceeds to the dockyard alone, but Marcia alerts Dan and then follows him.

Joe has also followed Amato and finds him preparing to leave the country. After Amato kills Joe, he finds Marcia outside his office and uses her as a shield while he shoots at Steve. When he runs out of bullets, Amato releases Marcia and runs to a speedboat. Steve swims after him and, after jumping aboard, fights Amato. As they struggle, the boat speeds out of control, and just before it crashes into a lighthouse, Steve knocks Amato into the water and jumps out. Neville, Dan and other policemen then arrive to rescue them and arrest Amato.

Confident that Kay’s testimony will restore his reputation and career, Steve goes home with Marcia.