Act of Violence (1948)

December 21, 1948, release date

Directed by Fred Zinnemann

Screenplay by Robert L. Richards

Based on a story by Collier Young

Music by Bronislau Kaper

Edited by Conrad A. Nervig

Cinematography by Robert Surtees

Van Heflin as Frank R. Enley

Robert Ryan as Joe Parkson

Janet Leigh as Edith Enley

Mary Astor as Pat

Phyllis Thaxter as Ann Sturges

Berry Kroeger as Johnny

Taylor Holmes as Gavery

Harry Antrim as Fred Finney

Connie Gilchrist as Martha Finney

Will Wright as boat rental man at Redwood Lake

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

I have seen Act of Violence twice now, and it’s even more moving on the second viewing. It’s a postwar film about ex-soldiers trying to adjust to civilian life. But it’s also about the effects of trauma on the people who love those ex-soldiers. The film doesn’t use the terms post-traumatic stress disorder and PTSD, but it could just as easily be about the problems of returning soldiers in any era. There are no easy answers, and the film doesn’t provide any.

I loved the opening, with the music, the horns, playing over the MGM/lion trademark. I don’t think I have seen this kind of opening, with just “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents” and the title card, in any other film noir (the credits don’t come until the end). Then the movie cuts to the beautiful urban cityscape of New York in the background; it is like a painting.

The dark night, the rain, the music, a man whose face we don’t see right away, the gun: all are classic film noir. Then the man (we still don’t know it’s Joe Parkson) boards a bus and we travel with him into bright light, daylight, and a small town (Santa Lisa, California) on Memorial Day, complete with a parade, a marching band, and horns that sound very different from the opener over the MGM/lion trademark. (I’m sure late 1940s postwar audiences would have been painfully aware of the significance of Memorial Day.) Joe Parkson is looking for Frank Enley and for revenge.

(This blog post about Act of Violence contains spoilers.)

Act of Violence doesn’t use any flashbacks. Instead, important plot points are revealed in painful conversations. Frank says to his wife, “Edith, a lot of things happened in the war that you wouldn’t understand. Why should you? I don’t understand them myself.” Later, after Joe Parkson has been to their house, Edith is blunt about what she wants from Frank: “I want to ask you something. When we packed up all of a sudden and came out here from Syracuse, three thousand miles across the country, was that on account of him [Joe Parkson]? Not collecting your terminal pay, dropping all our friends back East? It all was, wasn’t it, Frank? I know you went through some bad times in the war. I know some things must have happened that hurt you. I never asked. But I am asking now, Frank. I want to know.” Frank tells Edith that Joe was the bombardier on his missions. Edith is afraid that Joe will become violent when he returns looking for Frank. She wants to call the police, the army, but Frank stops her: “You don’t know what made him the way he is. I do.”

But Edith learns part of the truth from Joe Parkson: “Did he tell you that I’m a cripple because of him? Did he tell you about the men that are dead because of him? Did he tell you what happened to them before they died? . . . I was lucky. They thought I was dead and left me there. . . .” Edith refuses to believe Joe, but she leaves home in Santa Lisa to look for her husband Frank at the builders’ convention in Los Angeles, and he finally tells her what happened.

An exchange between Edith Enley and Ann Sturges, Joe Parkson’s girlfriend, is also blunt and painful:

• Ann: “Look, I’ve come a long way to stop this. Maybe nobody can. But I’m the only one that has a chance.”

• Edith: “What can you do? I’ve seen him [Parkson]. He’s vicious. He’s a killer.”

• Ann: “Is he? What about your husband? Do you call him a murderer?”

• Edith: “No. He didn’t mean it. He’s been sick with it.”

• Ann: “They’re both sick with it. And I want Joe to be well.”

Frank Enley’s PTSD flashback sequence was filmed perfectly, I thought. He enters a long tunnel, which is lit brightly (odd for a film noir). Is the bright light because he’s remembering clearly, truthfully? He hears snippets of the conversation from his time in the World War II prison camp in his mind. “You’ll find the tunnel in the north corner.” “Don’t do it, Joe.” By the time he comes to the end of the tunnel, he is distraught and shouting out loud in real time: “Don’t do it, Joe!” He heads to the train tracks and attempts suicide but jumps out of the way in the nick of time. From this point, Frank’s life spirals even more out of control (it first started spiraling out of control when he runs out of the builders’ convention after punching Joe Parkson). When Frank makes a conscious decision to set things right, his life seems to fall back into place.

Late in the film, Edith Enley tells her husband that she knows now he has faults and weaknesses. Is learning that Frank is just like any other man another “act of violence”? She describes learning this information as a shock and attributes it to her youth and naïveté. I think this is just one of many acts of violence portrayed in this film. Betrayal is another. Frank feels he betrayed his men; he in turn is betrayed by the Nazi officer in the prison camp.

The opening of this film, with only “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents” and the movie title, and the closing credits were stupendous. The letters were composed of simple, clear, white blocks and lines. They reminded me of a white picket fence (a white picket fence can be seen behind the closing credits), of small-town America and innocence, and how that innocence is tenuous at best. Act of Violence is a thought-provoking and moving portrayal of veterans and their loved ones struggling to come to terms with the past. It could be the story of veterans returning from any war and the families they come home to in any era.