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| Anthony Mann: The Tall Target (US 1951). The Club Car of the Night Flyer express train from New York to Washington D.C. through Baltimore. Slaveholder Ginny Beaufort (Paula Raymond), Rachel, her slave maid (Ruby Dee), Colonel Caleb Jeffers, a Northern Zoaves militia officer in charge of his troops on their way to the Presidential procession (Adolphe Menjou), Mrs. Charlotte Alsop, an abolitionist novelist interviewing Rachel about slavery (Florence Bates) and Beamish, a passenger (Percy Helton). Please do click on the photo to enlarge it. |
Le Grand Attentat / Panik på nattexpressen.
Anthony Mann
États-Unis / 1951 / 78 min / 35 mm / VOSTF
Avec Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou.
Not released in Finland.
La copie 35 mm projetée est un tirage de la Warner Bros. offert à la Cinémathèque française.
Rétrospective Anthony Mann
Viewed at La Cinémathèque française, Salle Georges Franju, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6, 27 March 2024
La Cinémathèque française : " À la veille de la guerre de Sécession, un détective tente d'empêcher l'assassinat du président fraîchement élu, Abraham Lincoln, à bord d'un train reliant New York à Washington. Réalisé à peu de frais en plein maccarthysme, Le Grand Attentat se révèle haletant du début jusqu'à la fin. Entravée par l'incrédulité générale, l'enquête devient une palpitante course pour le droit à la liberté, un huis clos ferroviaire qui renferme toutes les tensions d'un contexte social et politique explosif. Double jeu, paranoïa, rebondissements, duels... À la croisée du polar et du western, l'intrigue non dénuée d'humour, rythmée par le roulis et les sifflements du train, est admirablement servie par ses interprètes. En tête, Adolphe Menjou, Ruby Dee et un superbe Dick Powell en flic sauveur de président, et incidemment nommé John Kennedy. "
AA: In March 1861, the Night Flyer train rolls from New York to Washington, D.C., where the inauguration of the President elect Abraham Lincoln is about to take place. Aboard is a man with an assassination plan, equipped with a rifle with a telescope. The New York police officer John Kennedy (Dick Powell) is wise about the plan and determined to prevent it, but denied authorization from his superiors just before the train leaves, he proceeds anyway as a maverick, having now to dodge both sides of the law - the police and the assassination conspirators - putting his life repeatedly in danger during the journey.
Lincoln's original plan is to give a speech in Baltimore from his own train, but Kennedy's report reaches him on time, and Lincoln changes his travel plan. During the night, the assassination plot is thwarted and in the finale we glimpse Lincoln at dawn in his isolated compartment of the Night Flyer where he has travelled incognito, observing through the train window the construction site of the partially complete Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C.
Seen in 2024, Anthony Mann's political thriller is charged with alarmingly topical political relevance. The atmosphere in the screening was electrifying. Abraham Lincoln was the great unifier. This year his party, the Grand Old Party, the Republican Party, and its Presidential candidate have become great dividers. The Capitol now carries sinister associations because of the violent insurgent 6 January 2021 attack against democracy, compared widely with Mussolini's March on Rome coup d'état.
The Tall Target is an excellent political thriller. I was thinking about Matti Salo, the greatest Finnish expert on American cinema, and his affection for this movie, discussed in his final book Viitta ja tikari [Cloak and Dagger] about the political thriller. In Finland The Tall Target was never released, and I am grateful for this opportunity to finally see it in a perhaps rare print (" la copie 35 mm projetée est un tirage de la Warner Bros. offert à la Cinémathèque française "). The print was good to look at, but the film is so engrossing that I failed to pay attention to the visual quality with the attention it deserves.
The superb screenplay with perfectly sustained suspense and thrilling turns of peripeteia and anagnorisis was co-written by Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes) best known for Build My Gallows High aka Out of the Past, the film noir masterpiece. The Tall Target is not a film noir, although in many ways it comes close, and the cinematographer Paul Vogel had one major film noir, Lady in the Lake, under his belt. The ambience of danger and violence is conveyed via expressionistic lighting, bold camera angles and sharp montages. As a detective story and an action thriller The Tall Target does not disappoint.
Setting a movie in the claustrophobic space of a train is a challenge for the cinematographer, a curse which Vogel turns into a blessing. The same praise is due for Anthony Mann who gives us a display of his mise-en-scène genius in the narrow space as convincingly as he accomplishes it in the wide open spaces of his CinemaScope Westerns.
The train ride is an inherently cinematic subject since the Lumière Brothers, not forgetting Gance (La Roue), Keaton (The General), Renoir (La Bête humaine) or Lang (Human Desire), nor Hitchcock (A Lady Vanishes), Fleischer (The Narrow Margin), Kawalerowicz (The Night Train) or Kurosawa (High and Low). The tracking shot is an invention from the railway world: before special camera tracks started to be built, the cinema's first tracking shots were taken on actual railway tracks and moving boats, phantom rides included. In The Tall Target, affectionate views of the train depot and the cab of the steam locomotive remind us of The General, set in the same period. In Anthony Mann's direction, The Tall Target ranks among the best train movies.
One visual element, the mirror writing "The man is on the train" on the frosty train window, feels like an homage both to Lang (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) and Hitchcock (The Lady Vanishes).
The film is full of life, thanks to the casting and Mann's wise direction of actors. The villains are never caricatured. The smooth galanterie of Adolphe Menjou as Colonel Caleb Jeffers keeps us guessing to the end. Of the Georgia slaveholder siblings, Lance Beaufort (Marshall Thompson) is a perfect Southern gentleman and a Devil in disguise.
His sister Ginny Beaufort (Paula Raymond) trusts her brother unconditionally until his plan is exposed. It seems to be the rule with Anthony Mann that women have agency and pass the Bechdel test. Most importantly, Ruby Dee (1922-2014) as the slave girl Rachel, in an early distinguished appearance of the major performer and civil rights activist, speaking out about freedom in a proud performance that does not disappoint even in today's Black Lives Matter era.
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From Wikipedia: Unknown author - Library of Congress call number: LOT 12251, v. 2 |
SYNOPSIS FROM AFI CATALOG ONLINE:
SYNOPSIS FROM AFI CATALOG ONLINE:
In 1861, as the country seethes with unrest in the wake of the Presidential election, John Kennedy, a New York police officer who briefly served as Abraham Lincoln's bodyguard, becomes convinced that there will be an attempt on the newly elected President's life as Lincoln's train passes through Baltimore on his way to his inauguration in Washington, D.C.
When Kennedy's report is rebuffed by Simon G. Stroud, his supervisor at the police department, he angrily resigns his post, sends his report to the War Department and then boards the Night Flyer Express bound for Baltimore and Washington.
Kennedy's friend, Inspector Tim Reilly, was to meet him onboard with his ticket and suitcase, but when Kennedy arrives, Reilly is nowhere to be found, although Kennedy's suitcase has been delivered. Scrambling to buy a ticket at the ticket office, Kennedy discovers that there are none left. As the train pulls out of the station, Kennedy makes a mad dash and jumps onboard. While scouring the train for Reilly, Kennedy finds his friend's body dangling from an observation platform. After Reilly's body slips from the onrushing train, Kennedy stalks the train corridors and encounters Col. Caleb Jeffers, a Northern militia officer who is traveling to Baltimore to lead his troops in a procession.
Upon returning to his seat, Kennedy sees a stranger wearing his coat and holding his ticket and gun. When the stranger tells conductor Homer Crowley that he is Kennedy, Kennedy takes Crowley to Caleb's compartment, where Caleb identifies him as the real Kennedy and offers to share his compartment.
As Kennedy prowls the corridors in search of a gun, he feels a pistol pressed against his back. The stranger then escorts Kennedy to the rear of the train, and when the train stops, ushers him off. Kennedy overpowers the stranger and wrests the gun from him. As the train powers up to depart, Caleb hears the sounds of the scuffle and shoots the stranger. After Kennedy rejoins Caleb onboard, Caleb hands him a pistol and Kennedy then tells him that before dying, the stranger divulged that he was to meet his contact in car 27.
Proceeding to car 27, a club car, Kennedy and Caleb find Mrs. Charlotte Alsop, an abolitionist novelist, interviewing Rachel, the slave of Lance and Ginny Beaufort. Resentful of Mrs. Alsop's intrusive questions, Lance, an officer in the Confederate Army, voices his hatred for Lincoln and storms out of the car. After he leaves, Lance's sister Ginny explains that the family plans to detrain in Atlanta so that Lance can resign his commission.
When the train stops in Philadelphia, Caleb and Kennedy return to their compartment. After Kennedy stretches out on his berth, his head shrouded in a newspaper, Caleb tries to shoot him, but Kennedy has emptied his pistol. Now realizing that the stranger was Caleb's accomplice, and that Caleb was aiming at Kennedy but hit his own man by mistake, Kennedy takes Caleb into custody and turns him over to a Philadelphia police officer.
When Caleb shows the officer his military credentials, Kennedy asserts that Lt. Coutler at police headquarters can vouch for his authority. As Coulter is summoned, orders come to delay the train until a package can be delivered. While the train is waiting, Mrs. Gibbons, a mysterious passenger who has been closeted in her compartment with her invalid husband, steps out for air.
Soon after, Lt. Coulter arrives with a message from Stroud denying that Kennedy is a member of the police force. Overpowering Coulter, Kennedy flees and hides on the roof of the train. Once the package is delivered, the train starts moving and Kennedy slips back inside.
As the train speeds into the night. Rachel motions for Kennedy to come to her cabin and confides to him that Lance is carrying a rifle with a scope. As Rachel hands Lance's gun to Kennedy, Ginny overhears them whispering, slaps Rachel and then grabs the gun from Kennedy. Ginny then summons Lance, and after striking Kennedy unconscious, he admits that he is one of the assassins plotting to kill Lincoln as his train passes through Baltimore.
Lance drags Kennedy to Caleb's compartment, where the conspirators bind and gag him. When the train stops at Wilmington so that a team of horses can pull it into Baltimore, a barber boards to shave Caleb. The barber, an accomplice, explains the details of the assassination plot.
As the train pulls into Baltimore, word comes that Lincoln's train has been diverted. Leaving Kennedy in Lance's custody, Caleb detrains, and soon after, realizes that the delayed package was only a ruse to hide Lincoln in Mrs. Gibbons' compartment.
As the train slowly pulls out, Caleb scrawls "the man is on the train" on the dust of Lance's car window. Noticing the message, Lance places Kennedy in Crowley's custody and leaves to retrieve his rifle. After reading the message, Kennedy overpowers his guard and runs after Lance. As they struggle, Kennedy pushes Lance off the train and onto the tracks.
Soon after, Mrs. Gibbons appears and identifies herself as an undercover agent with the War Department. After congratulating Kennedy on saving Lincoln's life, she states that Kennedy's report spurred the War Department to undertake measures to secure Lincoln's safety.
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