Steve Thompson ain’t no hero, he’s just a guy that got a piece of bad apple stuck between his teeth. Robert Siodmak and DP Franz Planer depict this nihilistic noir in stark, brilliant Expressionist compositions pieced together like thin wild mercury, a sordid tale of decussating decisions.
Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) returns home to LA after a year’s sojourn, drawn to his old haunts and old ghosts like his ex-wife Anne (Yvonne De Carlo). Steve is an addict, not to drugs or liquor but the intoxication of his previous paramour whose curvaceous persona remains thick and hot in his blood. When they’re together they bicker and argue yet are also drawn together like opposing magnetic poles. Anna is now married to gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea) so they secretly decide to run away together after double crossing Slim during an Armored Car robbery, but Slim and Anna each have their own idiomatic agendas! This is the downfall of a once good and proud man who can’t help but get in his own way, as even his best friend Pete (now Det. Lt. Ramirez) threatens to knock some sense into him. But Steve is too deep into his sexual dependency and puts his faith (including other body parts) into his ex-wife. It all goes to Hell.
Siodmak begins the film with a clandestine embrace, as Steve and Anna steal a kiss between parked cars, the plot already well underway. When Anna is framed in the first close-up, she stares just slightly askew from breaking the fourth wall, her beautiful visage like Aphrodite speaking words pregnant with hope and desire, and Steve is hooked on every syllable, a man who thinks he’s the one in charge. Of course, this is only obvious in retrospect when the third act explodes, so we are able to commiserate with his gullibility. The story progresses to Steve’s forty-minute drive in an armored truck full of money, then the buildup is told in flashback. When the robbery occurs, Franz Planer films it in the ghostly fog of Tear Gas, as specters in gas masks dissolve into the ether firing point blank into helpless guards. The entire sequence is like a battleground where perspective is limited by hyper-focused perceptions, thrilling and violent in its urgency. Slim double crosses Steve, and both are wounded during the melee. A slow dissolve from Steve’s point-of-view reveals he’s alive and in traction at a hospital, surrounded by family. Steve was the inside man on the heist, but is mistakenly believed to be a hero, headlines proclaiming he saved half of the money! But now physically helpless, Siodmak and Planer envision him in isolated compositions, a man scared of reflections and shadows that may turn out to be a lone gunman to end his misery.
The final cross crisses as Steve escapes from the hospital and bribes the gangster to take him to Anna’s hideout, but she has plans to take the money and run. On her own. Unfortunately, Slim has followed his cohort and limps through the doorway, an avenging demon who makes his judgment, penetrating both his wife and her ex-husband with hot lead. ‘Till Death do they part. Together.
Final Grade: (B+)
