Bad Day at Black Rock

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) is both fixed-written, exciting, spectacular action film (with film noirish qualities) and a Western. On the surface, this classic of American cinema with the themes of integrity of the individual, group conformity and complacency, and civic responsibility is concerned. It can also serve as a powerful allegorical indictment of the Hollywood blacklist, while the climate of mistrust and fear of the 1950s has created McCarthyism seen.

The message of the company and the most influential director John Sturges’ can be interpreted in a different direction, but mostly as a narrow view of a foreign army happened intrusive in a desert town half-forgotten filled with blanks. Over a period of 24 hours, it is unwelcome and in front of several ominous signs, hostility, collective guilt, hypocrisy and bigotry. The film builds tension by withholding information about visitors to the mysterious mission, and the creation of a WHO-dun-it mystery about the secret enemy city. Finally, he learns the dark secret city, and fulfills the promise he made posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism agriculture father of a Japanese war buddy who saved his life during the Second World War on the battlefields of Italy to present.

Bad Day at Black Rock was on the short story “Bad Time at Hondo” by Howard Breslin base and adapted by Don McGuire. The film is a Hollywood first statements on the racist treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II – a group that created the ill and was forced into internment camps. The fictional town of Black Rock (California) serves as a microcosm of America in the postwar period. There are only nine cities in the film [the city manager and his two executors, a brother and a sister, a doctor, sheriff alcoholic who owns the local cafe, and a telegraph officer] – some of them are moral cowards, feel threatened and want to maintain the status quo, others are people willing to risk their lives and restore morality and civility in the city. The film, which in many respects similar to High Noon (1952), also eliminates the inevitable Western-style final confrontation.

The film was nominated for three Oscars – Spencer Tracy was the best actor, director John Sturges was nominated for best director and best screenplay for Millard Kaufman. The three candidates have lost the best picture-winning film of the year, Marty (1955). Coincidentally, Tracy has lost the Oscar for Best Actor in a co-star in this film, Ernest Borgnine as bats in danger, but in an Oscar-winning role as a Bachelor comfortable. The score by Andre Previn brings real strengthening and emphasizing in many melodramatic scenes of the film.