Force of Evil
*Kino Lorber’s new Blu-Ray restoration of “Force of Evil” is available on Tuesday, August 1, 2023.
**This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
In film noir, anybody could become a criminal. In a way, the genre is a closer representation of reality than films like “GoodFellas” or “The Godfather,” which delineate the lines between good and evil. But you don’t have to be Vito Corleone or Henry Hill or Al Capone to be on the wrong side of the law in film noir. That’s what makes the genre so tantalizing for audiences, I think. There’s also the visual landscape the filmmakers brought to the genre, which was often more flamboyant or stylized than regular crime films.
“Force of Evil” has been a film I’ve had on my list to see from the moment I first watched “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies.” It’s obvious when you watch Scorsese’s own forays into crime, whether it’s “Mean Streets” or “GoodFellas” or “Casino” or “The Departed,” that film noir- both the visuals and narratives- is a great source of inspiration to his own films. In “Personal Journey,” Scorsese gets to Abraham Polonsky’s 1948 noir in his early discussion of gangster films and storytelling. He also discusses film noir later, but by placing “Force of Evil” in an earlier section about crime films, it feels as though he’s giving us a hint that, even above the films in the genre he discusses later, this might be one more important to him personally than other films like “Detour” and “Scarlet Street,” however great they are. As the story of “Force of Evil”- which is both gangster film and film noir- progresses, we start to see how it’s themes and images might have influenced Scorsese more than most.
As the film begins, Joe Morse (John Garfield) is telling the audience in the voiceover that he’s about to be a millionaire. A big city lawyer, he’s working with criminals to try and fix the local numbers game. It’s big business for the criminals in this film, the hopes of the regular people that their numbers will come up. One of the things that separates this from traditional gangster films, and one of the highlights of film noir, is how often, the crimes highlighted are not always about violence, and reflect the basic needs and desires of people. Joe and his partners are looking to fix a particular game which always sees business; when the people holding the money are unable to pay out, everything will be consolidated into one. One of those who could be hurt by this arrangement is Joe’s brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez), who is a bookie for the numbers games himself. Joe wants him to get out, but Leo wants to go out his own way.
Adapted by Polonsky and Ira Wolfert from the latter’s novel, “Force of Evil” is an indictment on corporate America, and how it has perverted the American Dream to be something that the working class aspires to, but can never have. There’s a tragic element to this story that digs deeper into the psyche of a country coming out of the Great Depression, and World War II, than most film noirs of the era. That’s primarily because of the relationship between Joe and Leo at the center. Garfield and Gomez are terrific in these roles, giving us brothers whom may have taken different paths to get to the same basic place. These are tragic characters in their own ways, neither of whom end up in the position they deserve at the end.
Kino Lorber’s presentation of this film is a fantastic showcase for Polonsky’s vision of the corrupting power of greed. The 4K restoration gives us the beautiful depths of George Barnes’s photography, with its close-ups that get to the moral grey areas of the characters as the move through this story. Also featured is an introduction by Scorsese and a commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith. If you haven’t seen it yet- like I hadn’t- this is a great intro to the film; if you’ve seen it before, you’ll be pleased by how it’s presented here.
