Harry Belafonte, Ed Begley, and Robert Ryan go after a big score in ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (Robert Wise, 1959)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Sunday, August 17, 1:15
Series runs through April 10
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
“I want a safe thing,” Dave Burke (Ed Begley) tells Earl Slater (Robert Ryan) near the beginning of Robert Wise’s 1959 crime drama Odds Against Tomorrow. “This is a one-time job. One roll of the dice and then we’re through forever.” But it’s never that easy, either in real life or in film noir. At first Slater, a hard and fast old-time racist, doesn’t want in on the job because the third man is Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), a smooth-talking black nightclub singer trying to support his ex-wife, Ruth (Kim Hamilton), and their young daughter, Eadie (Lois Thorne), while in debt to a local mobster (Will Kuluva). But Slater has problems of his own; he’s tired of being supported by his devoted girlfriend, Lorry (Shelley Winters), and helping out their extremely flirtatious neighbor, Helen (Gloria Grahame). Soon they are converging on a bank in the small upstate town of Melton, New York, thinking that one big score will settle all of life’s ills. But things rarely work out that way, especially in black-and-white heist films.
Although often stiff, overwrought, and lacking nuance, there’s a lot to like about Odds Against Tomorrow, the first film noir to feature a lead black actor. Belafonte, who also helped finance the film, is particularly compelling, playing a strong black man who is not going to give in to anyone. The rest of the cast is excellent, from the primary trio through the supporting characters, with excellent cameos by Cicely Tyson, Mae Barnes, Carmen de Lavallade, and Wayne Rogers. There’s a wonderful scene in Central Park, where Johnny spends a day with Eadie, and the musical soundtrack is exceptional, composed by John Lewis and performed by the Modern Jazz Quartet. Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story) keeps things mostly straightforward, the racist angle always threatening, a kind of lurid Asphalt Jungle meets The Defiant Ones. Based on a novel by William P. McGivern, the film has quite a pedigree: The script was written by blacklisted writer-director Abraham Polonsky (Body and Soul, Force of Evil) and Nelson Gidding, and the film was photographed by Joseph Brun (Edge of the City, Hatari!) and edited by one of the best ever, Dede Allen (The Hustler, Bonnie & Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon). Odds Against Tomorrow is screening August 17 at 1:15 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Red Hollywood and the Blacklist” and will be introduced by Red Hollywood codirector Thom Andersen; the festival runs August 15-21 and also includes Joseph Losey’s The Big Night, Cy Endfield’s Hell Drivers, Frank Tuttle’s I Stole a Million, and Polonsky’s Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.