Storm Warning

 

Stuart Heisler: Storm Warning (1951). The KKK leader Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders) uses the bullwhip to discipline the blonde troublemaker Marsha Mitchell (Ginger Rogers). There is a lingering feeling that the KKK would prefer to burn her at the stake.

Stuart Heisler: Storm Warning (1951). The KKK leader Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders) meets District Attorney Burt Rainey (Ronald Reagan) who lifts Barr's mask and
ridicules his "Halloween routine".

La setta dei tre K / Ku Klux Klanin merkeissä / Under Ku Klux Klan.
    US 1951. Director: Stuart Heisler. 93 min
    Scen.: Daniel Fuchs, Richard Brooks. F.: Carl E. Guthrie. M.: Clarence Kolster. Scgf.: Leo K. Kuter. Mus.: Daniele Amfitheatrof.
    Int.: Ginger Rogers (Marsha Mitchell), Ronald Reagan (Burt Rainey), Doris Day (Lucy Rice), Steve Cochran (Hank Rice), Hugh Sanders (Charlie Barr), Lloyd Gough (Cliff Rummel), Raymond Greenleaf (Faulkner), Ned Glass (George Athens).
    Prod.: Jerry Wald per Warner Bros. 35 mm
    Helsinki premiere: 28 March 1952 Kaleva, distributed by Warner Bros.
    Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato: Guns for Hire: Frank Tuttle vs. Stuart Heisler
    Print from Warner Bros.
    E-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra.
    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 29 Aug 2020.

Imogen Sara Smith (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "Gorgeously shot and brilliantly directed, Storm Warning is a dark, atmospheric crime melodrama, though in delivering its message it pulls its punches. As an exposé of the Ku Klux Klan, the film exposes its own timidity. There is not a single mention of racist violence or religious bigotry; instead, the organisation is characterised as a money-making racket whose leaders exploit resentment of “outsiders” and government interference. The screenplay, by two excellent writers – Richard Brooks and Daniel Fuchs – amusingly plagiarises A Streetcar Named Desire, with Steve Cochran playing a dim-witted but sexy brute who wears a tight T-shirt, gets raucously drunk, has an adoring wife, and tries to rape his sister-in-law, just like Stanley Kowalski. To make up for its political weakness, the film goes for lurid shock in its climax; to make the KKK unpalatable to American audiences, it casts a blonde woman as the victim of their brutality. These lapses are all the more unfortunate because the film is in many ways so good. The opening scene is a stunner, as a woman from New York (Ginger Rogers) arrives in a Southern backwater to visit her sister, and finds the town mysteriously quiet, hostile, and suspicious. Walking through the dark, empty streets – asphalt glimmering with rain, air still and heavy with moisture – she witnesses a murder by hooded Klansmen, and soon discovers that one of them is her brother-in-law. Rogers gives one of the best performances of her later career as a wary, burned-out woman, torn between a crusading DA (Ronald Reagan) who wants her to testify and the goons who bully and blackmail her into keeping quiet. The film is a trenchant portrait of a cowardly community, where respectable business leaders urge the DA to drop his case because it will make the town look bad and hurt their Christmas sales. The presence of rightwingers Rogers and Reagan seems ironic in this, one of a spate of films about mob violence and civic corruption released at the start of the 1950s, warnings about a society sick with greed and intolerance." Imogen Sara Smith (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)

AA: Storm Warning is an excellent political thriller, to me Stuart Heisler's masterpiece of the films that I have seen (and I need to see more).

It was the last Warner Bros. contract film for the visionary producer Jerry Wald and the male lead, Ronald Reagan, playing District Attorney Burt Rainey. Both went independent after Storm Warning, Wald at first releasing through RKO, and Reagan benefitting from a lucrative Lew Wasserman deal.

Based on a powerful screenplay by Daniel Fuchs and Richard Brooks, Heisler immediately creates an electrifying mise-en-scène as Marsha Mitchell (Ginger Rogers) steps out of the bus to experience "Southern hospitality".

Rogers gives an effective and deeply felt performance in the leading role. Mitchell has come to the South to visit her little sister Lucy, played by the young Doris Day in an appealing and disciplined interpretation. In the night scenes there are shades of Southern Gothic or even Dracula (Jonathan Harker crossing the bridge to Transsylvania).

Again it is in the big crowd scenes that Heisler excels. The courtroom scenes are thrilling. I have just seen Roman Polanski's J'accuse, and the conspiracy of silence is similar. A monolithic wall comparable with the mafia law of omertà conceals the crime committed. They did not see anything or hear anything, and they are not going to say anything. Not even Marsha, eyewitness to the murder. She is protecting her sister, married to the Klansman Hank Rice (Steve Cochran), who pulled the trigger.

The most powerful shot of the movie is the one where the widow of the murdered journalist Walter Adams looks Marsha silently in the eyes. She does not say anything, either. At home, Marsha bursts into tears. "I'm not proud of what I did".

The KKK leader Charlie Barr (Hugh Sanders) warns Hank Rice: "don't rock the boat". But at home Hank sees Ginger in lingerie, and as Imogen Sara Smith observes, the screenwriters plagiarize A Streetcar Named Desire in a scene where Hank proceeds to rape Marsha. However, she is no Blanche DuBois.

In a shocking finale Marsha is beaten unconscious by the KKK and bullwhipped by the masked Charlie Barr in front of a burning cross in a huge crowd scene. Alerted by Lucy, Burt Rainey enters to unmask the KKK and ridicule their "Halloween routine".

It could have become a melodrama, but Heisler directs it as pure tragedy. Bosley Crowther compared Storm Warning unfavourably with the previous relevant Warner Bros. films Black Legion and They Won't Forget. I need to see them, and I'll be happily surprised if they are stronger than Storm Warning.

In an incredible casting coup, both players in the leading roles, Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan, were activists in the current Hollywood witch-hunts. This contributes to a much richer complexity in the performances than a casting of actors with liberal credentials would have enabled.

Imogen Smith and other critics have reproached Storm Warning for its timidity. I don't know if it would have been possible to make a mainstream Hollywood studio film about KKK lynching a Black person in 1951.

For me, Storm Warning is audacious as it is. Film narration is like dreamwork, based on similar principles, including Verschiebung (displacement) and Verdichtung (condensation). In the nightmare address of Storm Warning, it is an extremely powerful idea to cast a prestigious Hollywood blonde in the part where we would expect a persecuted Black male.

A brilliant Warner Bros. print.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SYNOPSIS FROM THE AFI CATALOG:

Model Marsha Mitchell takes advantage of an out-of-town assignment to visit her newly married younger sister, Lucy Rice. On her arrival, Marsha is struck by the unfriendliness of the townspeople, and when the taxi driver refuses to drive her to her destination, she is forced to walk to the recreation center where Lucy has a night job.

On the way, Marsha secretly witnesses a lynching. Greatly upset, she finally reaches the recreation center and tells Lucy what she saw. Lucy realizes that the victim must have been Walter Adams, a reporter who had denounced the Ku Klux Klan.

Although Marsha recognizes some of the men at the center as part of the lynch mob, she does not expose them when county prosecutor Burt Rainey questions the crowd.

Later, Lucy, who is pregnant, takes Marsha home and introduces her sister to her husband Hank. Aghast, Marsha realizes that Hank was also one of the mob. When Lucy tells Hank what Marsha witnessed, he explains that he thought they were only going to try to scare Adams.

Not wanting to hurt her sister, Marsha plans to catch the first bus out of town in the morning. A worried Hank then hurries to the recreation center to confer with Charlie Barr, his boss and the Klan leader.

Rainey returns, having identified the rope used to hang Adams as belonging to Barr's company, but Barr dismisses Rainey's accusations, and George Athens, the recreation center proprietor, testifies that Barr was there the entire night.

Rainey is waiting for Marsha when she picks up her suitcase the following morning. Marsha claims not to know anything, but when she inadvertently reveals that the killers were wearing Klan hoods, Rainey orders her to stay in town for the inquest. Barr then warns Marsha not to blame the Klan when questioned under oath, because Hank killed Adams and will hang for murder.

Marsha begs Lucy to leave her husband, but she is too much in love with him to listen to Marsha's pleas. At the inquest, no one, including Marsha, will testify about the previous evening's events, and Adams' death is attributed to unknown assailants.

Rainey, who is also getting community pressure to let the matter drop, tells Marsha that she has just given the Klan license to write their own laws.

Later, a drunken Hank comes home while Marsha is alone packing and tries to force himself on her, but Lucy interrupts and finally agrees to leave with Marsha.

Now Marsha resolves to testify against the Klan. Hank beats her, and later, the Klan brings her before the membership to be punished. Lucy brings Rainey to the meeting, and a gunfight ensues. Hank shoots at Marsha, but accidentally kills Lucy. After Barr is arrested, the mob panics and runs away. Although the Klan's power is broken, Marsha blames herself for the death of her sister.