Force of Evil (1948)

December 25, 1948, release date

Directed by Abraham Polonsky

Screenplay by Abraham Polonsky, Ira Wolfert

Based on the novel Tucker’s People by Ira Wolfert

Music by David Raksin

Edited by Art Seid

Cinematography by George Barnes

John Garfield as Joe Morse

Beatrice Pearson as Doris Lowry

Thomas Gomez as Leo Morse

Marie Windsor as Edna Tucker

Howland Chamberlain as Frederick “Freddie” Bauer

Roy Roberts as Ben Tucker

Paul Fix as Bill Ficco

Stanley Prager as Wally

Berry Kelley as Detective Egan

Beau Bridges as Frankie Tucker

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Produced by The Enterprise Studios

It had to happen sometime, I guess: I saw a film noir that I didn’t enjoy very much. According to Wikipedia, Force of Evil was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry (click here for more information), but the film fell flat for me.

Except for Marie Windsor’s performance, that is. Marie Windsor has a way of making John Garfield look even more wooden in comparison whenever she is on-screen. But more on that later.

(This blog post about Force of Evil contains spoilers.)

Part of the problem lies in the writing. I kept thinking that no one talks the way that most of the characters talk, and this was especially true any time Joe Morse (played by John Garfield) and Doris Lowry (played by Beatrice Pearson) are on-screen. There doesn’t seem to be any chemistry between them, and I was a bit disappointed that Doris sticks by Joe no matter what he throws at her, including his hat. Maybe that scene with Joe’s hat is an attempt at levity, but it is followed immediately by a scene with Edna Tucker and Joe Morse, which shines in comparison.

I’ve never been a big fan of John Garfield, and Force of Evil did nothing to change my opinion of his acting. I thought his performance was wooden—when he wasn’t overacting, that is. He seemed to portray only the two extremes: wooden and overacting. But the real letdown is the film’s final speech, delivered in a monotone by John Garfield over repetitive shots, a sequence that didn’t work for me at all:

“Doris was waiting for me downstairs, and we left before the police came. I wanted to find Leo, to see him once more. It was morning by then, dawn. And naturally I was feeling very bad there, as I went down there.

I just kept doing down and down there. It was like going down to the bottom of the world.

To find my brother. I found my brother’s body

at the bottom there, where they had thrown it away on the rocks. By the river. Like an old dirty rag nobody wants.

He was dead, and I felt I had killed him. I turned back to give myself to Hall because if a man’s life can be lived so long and come out this way, like rubbish, then something was horrible, and something had to be ended one way or the other, and I decided to help.”

Force of Evil is only about seventy-eight minutes long, but it could have been cut down to an hour and it might have been an improvement.

The bright spot (and the best reason to see Force of Evil) is Marie Windsor. She is fantastic as Edna Tucker, who wants so badly to be the femme fatale to John Garfield’s Joe Morse, the self-proclaimed lawyer for the numbers racket. In fact, I couldn’t understand why a corrupt lawyer would say no to Edna Tucker/Marie Windsor. Joe Morse talks about having a fiduciary responsibility to his partner—and Edna’s husband—Ben Tucker and how he would rather stay alive than give in to his partner’s wife, but his protests ring hollow to me. Yes, he is trying to save his brother, but he is still giving illegal tips in an illegal numbers racket. And Joe’s story is supposed to be noir, after all. Edna Tucker tries her best with Joe Morse on two occasions, and her scenes are the best in the film. Marie Windsor is wonderful in her own right and makes seeing Force of Evil worth the effort.

Marie Windsor appears in The Narrow Margin, a film I have seen more than once. She is great in that film, too. Click here for my blog post about The Narrow Margin.