Odds Against Tomorrow 1959

 

A last stand noir heist film of the late 50's, shot in great black and white with location shooting in New York City and Upstate New York. A simple tale really. Based on a book by hard core mystery crime writer William P. McGiven who also wrote “The Big Heat”. Ed Begley who is great here, plays an ex copper who has a scheme to rob a bank in a small run down town on the Hudson. He needs two more guys to help with the robbery so he gives a yell out to old pals Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte. Both guys are worn around the edges vets with lots of baggage.

Ryan lives somewhere on the upper west side in a shitty apartment with his blowzy wife played by Shelley Winters who is her usual great self and works at some kind of short shift shit job and supports Ryan who is nasty and run down and is an all out racist which is a stream running through the movie. Their upstairs neighbor is played by the superb Gloria Grahame who gives what she gives good in two way too brief scenes with Ryan getting it on with him while his wife is away. Hell the entire cast is plain and simple great.

Ryan's reactions to Belafonte are predictable and nasty and threatens to ruin the job before it even gets moving and his uncontrollable temper which simmers just below the surface erupts in a bar scene with a soldier played by Wayne Rogers. Both Ryan and Belafonte at first say no to Begley's offer, Ryan because he hates blacks and won't work with Belafonte and Belafonte no's it because he is trying to go clean from his gambling problems and get back with his wife and little girl who he is separated from.

Handsome Harry is an on again off again musician, (we get to hear him sing a bit) but he is in big trouble with some loan sharks, a trio of cliches including a fey gay nasty homo played in great 50's homo flair by the always terrific Richard Bright who is known here as Coco and made me winch.

So Because of the money problems and pressures they both finally say yes setting in motion the doom and gloom that will come. There is a nice sequence in Central Park with Belafonte and his kid riding the carousel a happy moment that is shattered by a busted balloon. There are also images of pearls usually around a woman's neck and an expensive strand torn apart by one of the threatening loan sharks. Visual metaphors all around.

Directed by Robert Wise who the year before made the equally grim “I Want To Live”. His career was varied beginning with film editor on “The Magnificent Ambersons” which he was forced to edit when Welles skipped town. For years he took the blame for the butchering of the film, when the blame should have been placed squarely on Orson's plate. He went on to directed some dandy B's including “Curse of the Cat People”, “Born To Kill”, “The Set Up” and the very popular “The Day The Earth Stood Still” before becoming a director of big budget technicolor fat cats including “West Side Story” and “The Sound Of Music”, both of which won him directing Oscars. Odds is a tight 90 minute scab of a film, hard, fast and grim with a tight script co written by black listed Abraham Polonsky still writing under pseudonyms and Nelson Gidding. Editing by the great Dede Allen whose first major film this was and with a hot to trot jazz score by John Lewis who was an original member of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Also look for the marvelous jazz singer Mae Barnes in a small singing bit ruined by a drunk Handsome Harry and in uncredited bits Zohra Lampert, Robert Earl Jones & Cicely Tyson.