ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW: simply brilliant cinema

I'm going to say this only once because I need to get it off my chest, then I promise I won’t mention it again.

I cannot understand those people who insist they will not watch a film if it's made in black and white. It doesn’t matter what it’s about or who’s in it – if it’s in black and white they are just not interested.

This inability to get past the lack of colour effectively closes them off to ninety five per cent of Hollywood’s output before 1960, including many of the all-time greats. “Citizen Kane”, “Casablanca”, and “On the Waterfront” all feature in the American Film Institute’s all-time top ten.

Black and white is not simply the absence of colour. In the hands of talented directors and cinematographers it’s an art form in its own right, using light and shade to create stunning compositions.

And among the thousands of films which would not be half as effective had they been shot in colour is a 1959 film noir drama called ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW.

I first saw this many years ago on late night tv, and it's stuck in my memory not only because of the gripping story and superb star performances, but also because of its' visuals. The combination of creative camerawork and stark black and white images are crucial to the film’s impact.

Ostensibly, the story is about a small town bank heist but the real focus is on two ill-matched members of the gang who are unable to get past their hatred for each other to work together effectively.

Robert Ryan is Earl Slater, a racist aging ex-con with a hair-trigger temper and a lifetime of bitterness over bad breaks etched into his face. “No one’s going to junk me like an old car” he snarls when his equally aging girlfriend Lorry (played by Shelley Winters) tries to talk him out of taking the job.

Harry Belafonte is Johnny Ingram, a musician and a drifter with a gambling habit and an ex-wife and young daughter. Unable to break his addiction to the horses, he’s deeply in debt to gangsters who are now threatening the lives of his estranged family.

Despite their mutual dislike both men see the bank raid as a final chance to find, in Slater’s words, the “hole in the fence” that everyone is looking for in life – the chance to change the course of fate.

Their lives are played out against the backdrop of an eerily bleak and silent New York City. Shot in the depths of winter Manhattan appears almost frozen, with the skyscrapers rising like giant tombstones in an enormous graveyard. There are cars and people on the streets but no sense of life. The air is so cold one can almost see it on the screen.

Robert Ryan is simply magnificent. Because he never made a fuss about his work and rarely gave interviews he is often overlooked but the fact is that he’s one of the finest actors ever to grace the big screen. His success here is in making the nakedly hateful Slater such a compelling character.

It says much about Harry Belafonte’s talent as an actor that he is able to hold his own against such powerful competition. Like Elvis, he had also found initial success as a singer before making the transition to films but unlike Presley he retained control of his career.

This allowed him to choose projects which required more than simply singing. Watching this film (which Belafonte’s company produced) with no prior knowledge of the man one would think he's an actor who could also sing when required.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is film noir at its finest; its sense of impending doom so palpable it almost takes solid form alongside Slater and Ingram as the walking dead, their futures predetermined by their inability to seize control of their life in any positive way.

Powerful, haunting and a great example of black and white cinema at its best ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is an essential part of any serious dvd collection. You can pick it up brand new for much less than $10. So buy it!

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL: message gets lost in the mystery

Made in 1959, during the height of the Cold War, THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL exploits the very real fear of annihilation by nuclear attack to explore issues of racism and humanity, but they're unfortunately overshadowed by the mushroom cloud-sized nagging question of what exactly has happened to humanity.

African-American mining engineer Ralph Burton (Harry Belafonte) emerges after five days trapped in a collapsed tunnel in Pennsylvania to discover he is apparently the only person left alive. Everywhere is completely deserted, homes and vehicles have been abandoned in what looks like a mass panic. Heading east he makes his way to New York City searching for signs of life but all he finds are eeriely empty and silent streets and skyscrapers. 
From what he can piece together from newspapers and radio recordings, life on earth has been wiped out by a deadly radiation cloud released by an unnamed enemy. Then a blonde haired, attractive young woman suddenly appears. Sarah Crandall (Inger Stevens) has also escaped the poison cloud.
With this mismatched and reluctant couple thrown together by fate, the question is can they  overcome their prejudices and preconceptions to make a life for themselves? Can they even bring themselves to touch each other? 
This was 1959 remember; the rise of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement to national prominence was still several years away, Belafonte and Sidney Poiter had only recently emerged as cinema's first Black leading men, and the idea of a Black man kissing a white woman on screen was still beyond the pale. The film makes a fairly half-hearted attempt to explore these taboos but our attention is distracted with wondering just what has happened to all the people.
New York is a city of eight million souls and it's clear from the enormous jams of abandoned cars that most did not make it beyond the George Washington Bridge, yet there's not a single body in sight. All these millions and millions of people have just vanished. It defies logic and science. Yes, some of those closest to a nuclear blast will be vaporised but as the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed, tens of thousands more died slow, painful and visible deaths.
And anyway, according to THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (hereafter referred to as TWTFATD) it was a radiation cloud not a bomb which wiped out the human race, so it's highly unlikely to have also made every last body vanish. 
While I'm a sucker for these 'last man on Earth' movies, mostly because I love the idea of having a completely intact Manhattan entirely to myself, this glaring lack of corpses stinking up the streets seriously weakens the film's efforts to discuss loftier concepts.
Belafonte is an impressive screen presence and a fine actor - his second release of 1959 "Odds Against Tomorrow" is one my favourite films of the 50s - but as producer of TWTFATD as well as the star he lets himself down by sanctioning this enormous hole in the plot.
And as for the ending - please don't get me started! All I'll say is if there was an Oscar for the year's most implausible, biggest cop-out finale it would be known as the TWTFATD.