A Late Noir with a Moral: Odds Against Tomorrow

 

 Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Directed by Robert Wise

United Artists, 95 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★

 

Odds Against Tomorrow is a late film noir from 1959. It’s in black and white and  gives some amazing views of an America about to change dramatically. Like most noir movies it’s a crime-gone-wrong film. I wouldn’t call it a gripping story per se–the script is, if I might, a bit nondescript–but there are lots of interesting things going on that make it worth an hour and a half of your time.

 

Ed Burke (Ed Begley) is an ex- New York City cop who flirts with minor crime. He needs money and has a foolproof (right!) plan to make a bundle. His first recruit is Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), a singer deep in debt because of a gambling problem. He’s not a crook, but he is worried about how he can support his wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton) and his cute-as-a-button daughter.

 

Burke next turns to Earle Slater (Robert Ryan), an ex-con that life has kicked around. His live-in squeeze Lorry (Shelley Winters) believes in him, but Earle is distraught, drinks too much, and has too much testosterone. The latter leads him into the arms of not-so-trusted neighbor Helen (Gloria Grahame). Slater is in until he meets Johnny; Earle is a racist who thinks blacks can’t be trusted in a tight situation. A local mob boss vouches for Johnny and Earle reluctantly agrees to go along, but his bias is so visceral that we suspect it will come into play later.

 

Burke’s big plan is that he has been casing a bank far from New York in the town of Melton (actually Hudson, NY). Every night after than bank closes a delivery man delivers sandwiches and coffee to a side door to those tallying up the day’s receipts. Burke reckons that each of them can make at least $150,000 by creating a diversion, sending Johnny to the side door posing as a delivery man, and forcing their way in. It’s not a bad plan, but these are the last days of the old Hollywood Code, so you know that it will go bad.

 

The Code aside, there are numerous reasons to watch the film. Director Robert Wise was a Hollywood liberal who supported civil rights, hence the choice of famed singer Harry Belafonte–probably the most-famous black actor after Paul Robeson and before Sidney Poitier–was no accident. Among the scriptwriters was Abraham Polonsky, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy years. This alerts us that you should look for social messages in the film, especially in regard to race. The film’s denouement is spectacular and pulls no punches in delivering its moral–even if it does borrow liberally from the 1949 James Cagney film White Heat.

 

Another reason is to catch cameos of people you know for latter work, such as choreographer/dancer Carmen De Lavallade, Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H fame, and Cicely Tyson. It also has a very good soundtrack that features Belafonte, but also jazz legends such as Bill Evans, Milt Jackson, and Joe Wilder.

 

The cinematography from Joseph C. Brun is incredible. For instance, Brun used infrared to film Ryan walking down West 143^rd Street and other black and white filters and techniques that give the film a grungy underworld feel. To get an idea of what Wise and Brun did, go to this site to see how they transformed New York and Hudson. It features stills from the movie, but if you leave your cursor hover over it you’ll get a color shot from today.  

 

A final note: I’ve called Odds Against Tomorrow a slice of yesteryear. If you know New York, you might be amused by relatively empty streets and characters that drive across town and pull up directly in front of where they want to go. Stifle your giggles; there simply weren’t as many vehicles on the road back then. The population was under 180,000, which is just a tick over half of what it is today. In 1960, there only 61.6 million registered vehicles, less than 21 percent of today’s total. That made driving a car as odd as all men wearing hats and suits everywhere now seems.

 

Rob Weir