Odds Against Tomorrow April 13, 2007
Posted by clydefro in : Classic Films, 1950s, Gloria Grahame , trackback
Despite a title befitting a daily soap opera more than a melodramatic post-noir caper movie, Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow
The film begins with a terrific opening title sequence and ends with a dynamic bleakness. The problem is the remaining hour and a half, where we’re introduced to scheming ex-cop Burke (Begley) who enlists a white racist (Ryan) and a black man in debt (Belafonte) to help him rob a bank in upstate New York. Where other heist films often try to make audiences sympathize with the robbery participants, Odds Against Tomorrow makes no such attempt. Ryan’s character Slater is a Southern-accented, ex-con killer who hates black people (giving Ryan, who apparently was much nicer than the roles he played, a bigot companion to his anti-semite, Oscar-nominated turn in Crossfire). Belafonte is Ingram, a nightclub performer who’d rather bet his money on horses and cards than provide for his young daughter, putting him $7,500 in the hole to a bookie. Rounding out the main cast are two empty roles for Winters and Grahame, who are pretty much wasted as Ryan’s girlfriend and upstairs neighbor, respectively. Grahame, in probably her last notable film role, is still effective as a really strange woman whom Ryan beds in one of those misogynistic “no means yes” scenes we sometimes see in older movies.
Characters certainly don’t have to be likeable or easy to relate to for a film to be interesting, but it helps, at least, for them to either have some redeeming qualities or something else to give the audience an identifying action or characteristic. We just don’t get that here and the majority of the picture, leading up to the climactic bank job, subsequently disappoints. Are we supposed to feel something for the Ryan character because he’s a war veteran? I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine how it’s possible to find anything of interest in him. Ryan often played the villain in movies, but, even in many of those roles, he had a “good guy” to play off of and made his character more interesting, such as in The Naked Spur or House of Bamboo. The only other main character we have here is Belafonte, who is likeable enough but never seems to want to stop gambling. The brief scenes between him and his daughter do little to change our perception. Instead of being with her on the carousel, he gets off to talk to a couple of his bookie’s goons. The balloon he’s supposed to be taking care of for her gets popped by some teenagers as he calls Burke in a phone booth.
Even though the performances are fine, the characters are unoriginal and uninspiring. By the film’s release in 1959, Ryan had played nearly every possible stripe of bad guy and watching him portray such a repulsive character becomes tiresome. Bigotry, whether in 1959 or currently, is as easy and unwanted of a short cut to portray an antagonist as the black hat we too often see in simplistic westerns. The scene between Ryan and a pre-M*A*S*H Mike Farrell as a young soldier does nothing to alleviate any hostility the audience has for him and the character’s actions never allow him to fit the disillusioned war veteran mold. Ryan is annoyed by Farrell’s behavior, including his treatment of a young woman, but then he goes home and works over Grahame’s ditzy neighbor, whose intentions make little sense outside of the realm of other movies. Belafonte’s fellow war vet is just as lacking in depth and reason, but he manages to come across a tad better.
Much of this is due to Belafonte himself, who had few film roles and, in contrast to Ryan, was less established as one particular screen character. I’d say he’s the main reason to watch Odds Against Tomorrow and he doesn’t disappoint. Though far from a great actor, Belafonte, whose company produced the film, was probably on par with other (white) singers who dabbled in acting such as Frank Sinatra (Oscar winner), Bing Crosby (Oscar winner), and Bobby Darin (Oscar nominee). His nightclub performances, both the solo of “My Baby’s Not Around” and “All Men are Evil” alongside Mae Barnes, are the highlights of the film for me, as Belafonte shows a natural, unrestrained easiness that doesn’t really pop up when he’s reciting his scripted lines. The film’s outstanding score, by jazz pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, is reminiscent of Wise’s previous feature I Want to Live!, which won Susan Hayward a deserved Academy Award but didn’t live up to the promise of the brilliant, jazz-infused first few minutes.
Leaving the viewer somewhat unsatisfied seems to be a familiar problem with Wise’s directorial efforts. Maybe his pictures haven’t aged well, but I find myself almost always wanting to like Robert Wise’s movies more than I actually do. From what I’ve seen, only The Set-Up, his previous teaming with Robert Ryan, would earn an unqualified recommendation. Both Curse of the Cat People and The Day the Earth Stood Still have their admirers, but I’m not entirely convinced. He also won two Academy Awards for directing West Side Story (shared with Jerome Robbins) and The Sound of Music, so his versatility is difficult to question. There’s just something that I can’t quite put my finger on that seems lacking in his films though. Truth be told, I can’t come down too hard on the man because, firstly, he edited Citizen Kane (even if his subsequent work on The Magnificent Ambersons is more dubious), and, second, he was kind enough to respond to a letter I wrote as a teenager with an autographed picture. His distinctive penmanship even showed that he had addressed the return envelope himself.
Even if that thoughtful gesture made me a fan for life, it didn’t pierce my objectivity in regards to his films. Odds Against Tomorrow is far from an entirely successful film. It meanders along, focusing on underdeveloped (or possibly unworthy) characters and climaxes in a bank robbery that’s too short and inanely executed. The final “which is which” scene is impressive in its culmination of the relative likenesses and differences between the main characters, but it’s too little, too late for a film that should have been better in nearly every way. The racial aspects are mildly interesting, but still lack any real introspection or provocation into why the characters act as they do.
We’re given the sense that Belafonte’s character is distrustful of whites, though seemingly less than Ryan is of blacks, but nothing more is really made of it. As hokey and unrealistic as Stanely Kramer can be, his film from the previous year, The Defiant Ones, does a better job of exploring the relationship between a white man and a black man who have no previous reason to dislike one another aside from skin color. Even though the Kramer film has a predictable resolution, whereas Wise and his screenwriters stand firm, it still attempts to examine irrational prejudices with an eye toward improvement instead of simply linking racial hatred with ultimate downfall. The almost offensively stereotypical homosexual character in Odds Against Tomorrow sort of drowns out much of the pro-equality message the film strives for as well.
The R1 DVD release from MGM is a satisfactory, though supplement-free, affair with very good image quality and presented in the original academy ratio (a seemingly odd choice considering Wise had previously been using wider formats). It’s definitely not a bad film, but Odds Against Tomorrow is a disappointment because of the talent involved and the limp product delivered. I read that Jean-Pierre Melville was an admirer of Wise’s film, and that actually makes sense. The great French director, however, knew how to use suspense and a methodical frigidity much more than we see in this movie, which takes too much time focusing on the lacking personal lives of the main characters and fails to deliver the memorable heist that had been simmering throughout the film. There’s also an inexplicable lack of tension between Ryan and Belafonte when the movie desperately needs it. Odds Against Tomorrow may have inspired great films, but it falls short of approaching that level itself.
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