Joseph L Mankiewicz (1950)
Ashley Clark, programmer of BFI’s ‘Black Star’ season, gave a good and concise introduction to No Way Out. He moved swiftly from a plug for ‘Black Star’ as a whole; to the podcast mini-series that forms part of the season, highlighting six black stars, including Sidney Poitier; to a few words about Joseph Mankiewicz’s film, in which Poitier made his (credited) screen debut. It’s unusual for a present-day audience to need to be warned about offensive language in a Hollywood product of 1950 but Clark was right to flag this. The racial epithets in No Way Out are startling not least because they’re heard in a variety of registers. They’re not only spat out vengefully by the racist villain of the piece but also voiced casually and neutrally – if anything, more shockingly – by the powers-that-be at the city hospital where the Poitier character, Luther Brooks, has recently completed his training as a doctor.
Although now qualified to practise medicine independently, Luther tells his mentor Dr Wharton (Stephen McNally) that he’d like to stay at the hospital for a further year, working as a junior resident there. Two brothers, both shot in the leg by a policeman as they attempted a robbery, are brought to the hospital’s prison ward. As Luther examines Johnny Biddle (Dick Paxton), the other brother, Ray (Richard Widmark), subjects the young doctor to racist abuse. Luther is concerned by Johnny’s disorientation, suspects he may be suffering from a brain tumour and administers a spinal tap. Johnny dies during the procedure. Ray immediately blames Luther for his brother’s death. Luther anxiously requests an autopsy to prove the accuracy of his diagnosis but state law dictates that an autopsy can’t be carried without the permission of the deceased’s family – permission which Ray Biddle refuses to give.
From this point of the plot onwards, the movie develops into an unusual combination of conscientious racial drama and film noir. You don’t automatically associate Joseph Mankiewicz with either genre (although he had directed thrillers early in his career) but No Way Out is taut, harsh and powerful. The crime drama framework proves very effective as a means of containing the film’s moral conscience, which doesn’t obtrude the way it does in some of Stanley Kramer’s work, for example. It’s remarkable that Mankiewicz made this picture in the same year as All About Eve (which was released two months after No Way Out). The screenplay, which he co-wrote with Lesser Samuels, is well constructed and includes plenty of sharp dialogue. There is a third criminal Biddle brother, the deaf mute George (Harry Bellaver), whose disability is very cleverly used: in creating edgy moments when George and Ray communicate through sign language that others in their company can’t read; and in the plotting of the film’s climax. Milton Krasner’s stark black-and-white photography and Alfred Newman’s dramatic score consistently enhance the strong narrative.
On the day after America voted to make itself great again, No Way Out supplied a timely reminder of how great a blot racism was on the US landscape of the 1950s. This comes through in the picture’s peripheral details and film-history context, as well as in its main themes. Sidney Poitier has the main part but his name doesn’t appear until the second page of acting credits in the opening titles (and it’s not a separate ‘And introducing …’ billing). He also had a leading role in the British-made adaptation of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country in 1951, but it wasn’t until five years after No Way Out that Poitier, in spite of the impact he made in Mankiewicz’s film, got his next significant Hollywood part, when, at the age of twenty-seven, he played a schoolkid in Blackboard Jungle. It was another two years from that film to his starring role in Edge of the City. Poitier is both excitingly dynamic and prideful as Luther Brooks – enough to obscure the condescending streak in No Way Out’s presentation of its African-American characters’ one-track nobility and simple domestic pleasures.
Richard Widmark is erratic but he’s often convincing and goes deeper into Ray Biddle than might be expected. So does Mankiewicz’s and Lesser Samuels’s writing of the role. The Biddles come from the poor, white working-class area of the city and Ray is a man with a desperate need to hate. Even when the autopsy is eventually carried out and vindicates Luther, Ray won’t – can’t – accept that the black doctor wasn’t to blame for his brother Johnny’s death. Johnny’s widow is perhaps a bit too morally flee-floating in the story and Linda Darnell is a limited actress but both the character and the performance work well enough. Mildred Joanne Smith plays Luther’s wife Cora. Amanda Randolph is excellent as Gladys, Dr Wharton’s housekeeper – a sequence involving her and Edie is one of the most volatile and, in its description of racial prejudice, incisive moments of the movie. No Way Out is physically very well cast, down to the smallest roles.
9 November 2016
