Watch No Way Out For Free

The Age of Commercialism

That was an excellent one.

Thanks for the memories!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Anyone here see "Django Unchained"? You recall all the controversy over the excessive use of the 'N' word and the blatant racism in that picture? I counted the 'N' word seventy seven times myself in Django but I'm sure I was distracted and missed a few. But now here's "No Way Out" from 1950 - that's over sixty years ago and I have to wonder what movie audiences were saying about it back then. I know I heard Widmark use the 'N' word repeatedly, along with a host of other colorful racial slurs like boogie, coon, black boy and sambo. I can't say that I've seen any film that predates this one to tackle racism on this scale so dramatically and effectively.There's another possible connection to 'Django' that I'd like to bring up, but this one might be a stretch. Remember who King Schultz and Django were tracking at the beginning of the story? - it was the Brittle Brothers and there were three of them. Brittle - Biddle? I'm probably way out on a limb here, but it could have been buried in Tarantino's subconscious somewhere.Well enough of that. Making "No Way Out" was a gutsy move for all the parties involved. Twentieth Century Fox head Darryl Zanuck decided to personally produce the film because of it's controversial nature. He got this young kid Sidney Poitier to portray the role of Dr. Luther Brooks, brand new intern at a county hospital prison ward. Poitier had been signed to do a Broadway play when this part was offered, so using that as leverage, tried to renegotiate his salary to do the play. No dice they said, thinking it was a bluff, and so a movie career was born that's lasted a half century.Complementing Poitier in his breakout role include Richard Widmark as the uber-racist Ray Biddle, and Linda Darnell as a waitress from the wrong side of the tracks trying to make a better life after escaping a stormy marriage with Johnny Biddle, who's death triggers the conflict of the story. Now Edie Johnson, she marks her upward mobility by proclaiming "I used to live in a sewer. Now I live in a swamp".Getting back to the racial component of the story, not only was it the language that jolts the viewer, but the actions of the characters as well. Widmark's character blows cigarette smoke in Poitier's face at one point while being treated for a gunshot wound, and later in the story just after a full scale race riot, an elderly white woman spits in Poitier's face in retaliation for her husband's injury. Man, I would have loved to been around for the decision making process to see how these scenarios were argued.Personally, my favorite Poitier film is 1967's "In the Heat of the Night", but you can see how the template for his better known films was introduced here. Often cast in roles where he had to overcome bias and racial hatred, his characters have come to represent the best aspects of humanity by transcending stereotypes and blind prejudice. In that respect, "No Way Out' was somewhat a misnomer for this talented black actor.

Whether you like Mankiewicz or not (generally, I find his films too melodramatic), this one is very worth watching just as a window into the past.It was released in 1950, and gives a fascinating critique of race in America when Martin Luther King, Jr., was still in Divinity School. The resentments and misconceptions of the various characters -- the white hospital administrator who believes graduating black doctors will increase funding, the black elevator operator who believes black doctors have to pass tests white doctors don't. Then there is the depiction of racism as virulent, irrational, and pathological -- Widmark takes the bus to crazy-town and doesn't take a transfer for the return trip. But the one character that holds everything together is Linda Darnell's Edie Johnson. She's the character who develops -- everyone else is basically static. She's a lot like Widmark's Ray Biddle. As a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, she's not gotten a lot of breaks. So she's prey to his "blame-the-negro" rhetoric. But the best scene in the movie is one in which she is in her apartment with Biddle's brother George. She hears a domestic dispute out the window, and maybe it is a coincidence, but it spurs her to action -- and the action she takes is the hinge for the end of the movie. So while this movie had a lot of Drama (Widmark chews the scenery in a way the more understated Poitier is generally able to avoid), it was truly fascinating.

This fine drama details a story of racial strife and animosity in a production that presaged the civil rights movement in America by several years. The central figures are Richard Widmark, a bigoted hoodlum and hater of blacks, and Sidney Poitier, a black doctor who is accused of the murder of Widmark's brother while trying to save his life. Widmark and Poitier are excellent in the latter's first major Hollywood film. The picture's main thread is the state of affairs among blacks in American society and white attitudes towards them as mirrored in several characters in the film. Stephen McNally, Poitier's boss in the hospital, prizes the young doctor's skills and has a high opinion of him while Linda Darnell is indifferent to blacks. There is racism expressed by blacks as well in certain characters so neither side gets a moral pass in the film. The movie deserves wider popularity because of its courageous introduction of a troublesome subject to American audiences. Great acting, lensing and music make the picture a landmark film.

Note the constant siren sounds in the background, clear warning signals to underscore the movie's social message. Despite a number of flaws, this is the kind of hard-hitting racial drama that disappeared following the Hollywood purges of the early 1950's. The Cold War intimidation of liberals is not yet evident in this 1950 production, while it's probably a measure of the movie's significance that studio head Darryl Zanuck personally produced it.There's a revealing scene early on that's arguably the film's most telling. There hospital chief Moreland explains the political facts of life to head doctor Wharton who just wants to do right. No, Moreland explains, an autopsy to head off a potential race riot can't be done because the politics of funding simply override other considerations, even a possible riot. This is the film's one effort at rooting race problems in some segment other than poor whites and besieged blacks. In my book, putting the blame on the working-class and the poor takes the easy way out. The struggling white neighborhood of Beaver Canal is easily parodied through the conflicted Darnell and the vicious Widmark as though that's where the basic problem lies.Of course, the stuff of melodrama often comes from potential for violence. And racial violence often comes from working-class neighborhoods where frustrations are generally highest. Thus the movie's melodrama focuses on Beaver Canal and its violence, while Darnell's character implies that once she escapes the neighborhood's negative influence, she'll become the instinctually good person she's always been. Similarly, Poitier's implied salvation comes from moving up in social class and leaving the anger of the ghetto behind. Thus, the solution for both lies in escaping the intolerance of their working- class origins, and entering the white middle-class world symbolized by Doctor Wharton. In effect, racism is thus reduced to class, specifically to the racial hatreds bred in the working class, while the solution comes from escaping that class. Now, there are strong elements of truth in this picture, as true today as in 1950. The problem is that as an anatomy of racism the film leaves out a key overriding element, namely how the other social classes benefit from racial division, particularly the wealthy investor class who then confronts a work force weakened by racial rivalry. Now, I don't expect a well- intentioned melodrama like this to take on a complex social-economic question like that. But it is worth pointing out how the movie reduces a knotty societal problem to the simplifications of working-class brutality and resentment. Such material can produce riveting melodrama like No Way Out, but can also be misleading in the picture it presents.The film itself is highly charged and well paced, with a fine cast and a thoughtful screenplay within the limitations. Poitier especially presents a dignified and handsome appearance not seen since the days of Paul Robeson. The blowzy Darnell always excelled at tough broad roles, and I like the way the script implies that Widmark's hold over her is both a sense of common origins and a former illicit affair. Thus, when she relapses with Widmark into typical Beaver Canal racist talk, a realistic point is made about not turning your back on where you come from. It's this clash between her altruistic instincts and her Beaver Canal origins that makes her both sympathetic and the film's pivotal character. Widmark's got a thankless role. Nonetheless, when he hysterically pleads at film's end for someone to care about him, he makes a good point even though he puts it in purely personal terms. Instead, the plea could have been put in equivalent social terms. As a matter of fact, when has the nation's power structure ever given a darn about the Beaver Canals of America. Widmark could have said that he sees everyone else advancing (like Poitier's doctor) except his own part of town, the white working-class part, and had a telling point, more relevant in today's economy than 60 years ago. As a result, white resentment gets focused downward on black advances instead of upward on those political and economic interests that make it so difficult for all colors to advance together.Despite the limitations, the film remains a compelling drama of racial conflict. Of course, looks change along with fashions and attitudes. But don't be fooled. The underlying social dynamics have changed very little.