Odds Against Tomorrow

Bigotry undermines this unholy trio's effort to execute the ultimate robbery. The actors whipped up for this illegal exercise are played by Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Ed Begley. The volatile chemistry between the three desperate fellows fuels this bleak film noir from the late Fifties. Once again, there is some gorgeous on location photography in Manhattan, especially Central Park. Fine Jazz and Calypso music are served up at the smoky club where Belafonte works. Crooked camera angles and cluttered set direction contribute nicely to a claustrophobic atmosphere. The apartment building where Begley resides has a weird elevator that has multiple exit doors as well as an operator who likes to talk about the wind piercing the elevator shaft. The dames--Gloria Grahame and Shelly Winters--are rough but warm around the edges. Wayne Rogers makes his debut in a small role as a braggart in a bar. Stick around for the killer final and be blown away.

Good low budget heist film. Ryan's character is one of the ugliest portrayals of a white racist in film. Belafonte's character is one of the most multi-faceted and complex potrayals of an African American up until that time, and the performance doesn't date at all. Wise keeps the pacing taut and the suspense high. There's great black and white location shooting in New York City and upstate in Hudson, New York. Other things of interest: it's written by black-listed Abraham Polonsky under a pseudonym (check out his great "Force of Evil"); Cicely Tyson appears in a bit part; Richard Bright portrays a pretty overt homosexual for the time; early use of a zoom lens and infrared photography; edited by Dede Allen; some interiors shot at the old Gold Medal Studios in the Bronx.

Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow grinds along to an inevitable conclusion, but offers a great performance by Ed Begley as Dave Burke, an ageing ex con looking to set up one last job. Filmed in black and white in winter in New York (both the city and a small-town upstate venue where the bank is) it has a drabness that permeates the whole film. Robert Ryan plays racist small-timer Earle Slater, who must team up with Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) a jazz singer/vibraphonist who owes gambling debts to mobster Bacco played by Will Kuluva. Shelley Winters plays Slater's girlfriend Lorrie, a lonely woman with a steady job trying to buy his affection. Their relationship is based more on mutual need than love, her for sex and him for the money and company. Begley as Dave Burke must referee between his two cohorts. The racial tension between Slater and Ingram is carried to the extreme, and in the end it is what does in the heist. The subdued jazzy musical score combined with the bleak photography make this one moody movie. While the ending for Begley is pure drama, for Ryan and Belafonte it is too ironic for its own good, a clear example of the so-called message interfering with the plot, or maybe the message was the plot.

Nowadays Robert Wise has been restored to critical favor.It was about time.An eclectic talent,he tackled sci-fi (the day the earth stood still),musicals (west side story) ,social topics (I want to live),film noir (this one),horror("haunting" is better than any horror film I can think of).He invented the movie "in real time":"the set-up" occurred more than ten years before "Cleo de 5 à 7".

"Odds against tomorrow" is one of these films that seems better today than before.Influenced by John Huston (the asphalt jungle),it did influence French director Jean-Pierre Melville(le samouraï,le cercle rouge).Wise's movie represents the twilight of film noir,the dead end (check the last picture),the terminus of the genre.

It's the story of a hold-up,but action aficionados will not be satisfied.Wise wants to communicate a whole context,he wants to detail his characters to a fault.How many directors would dare that today?Robert Ryan's part is very complex.First he seems friendly,but further acquaintance shows a lack of self-confidence (he's getting old,he's a washout,he wants to go for broke) .And he is a racist.Rarely,this obnoxious feeling has been depicted with such wit.Why is he so?No answer,no explanation,he's racist,period.The ending which I will not reveal of course demonstrates (watch out for the two last lines of dialogue,they are simply fantastic!),the absurdity of this cancer of our societies.Harry Belafonte is on a par with Ryan:he's a gambler down on his luck,and he,too,is enduring personal turmoil:his wife wants to break off communication with him,not only because he lives in a dangerous world,but,because he sticks with his black brothers(the songs in the cabaret are telling;and the way Belafonte uses the xylophone as drums is too)This wife ,like Sarah-Jane in "imitation of life" (released the same year),is dreaming of a "white" life.Their couple is doomed whatever they may do.Ed Begley,always smiling,beaming ,is the threesome's troubleshooter.In his own way,he seems wise (no joke intended),the good guy that wants to retire after the hold-up.

Then,just before the action scenes,suddenly,the earth stands still(again,no joke intended)The atmosphere becomes unusual,poetic,almost pastoral:Belafonte watches the river flow and finds a broken doll in the sludge:he certainly thinks of this life he could have lived with his little girl.Besides,children shots frame the movie as a symbol of a long gone innocence;at the beginning,Ryan meets some on them on his way to Begley's flat;and just before the bank scene,some of them are playing cops and robbers with toy revolvers.While Belafonte is wandering along the river,Begley looks at a statue (a Christ?)and reads a strange and sadly unprophetic inscription carved into the stone.Ryan watches a rabbit,he aims at it,we hear a shot:it's only a tin can.

THe hold-up does not interest Wise.Like the true auteurs,it reduces it to another event,not more important than Ryan's fight with the soldier. And all these pastoral vignettes echo to the urban,almost abstract set where the drama is resolved.There's something apocalyptic here,recalling Walsh's "White heat",the main difference being that James Cagney's character was psychotic and Ryan's and Belafonte's are "ordinary".

This peak of the film noir ,not necessary appealing because drifting too far from the shores of gangsters' paraphernalia,should not be missed.Like most of Wise's movies ,it will still improve with time.

Odds Against Tomorrow is a decent, somewhat unimaginative crime picture with a message. It's mostly about three man who plan a robbery, and their reasons why. Robert Wise directed, and Harry Belafonte was the star-producer. There's an unfortunate air of deja vu about the picture, as this kind of story had become all too common by the time it was made. Indeed, director Robert Wise had made crime movies before, and had worked with Robert Ryan before, too, on the excellent The Set-Up. This one was filmed mostly on location in New York, and nicely reflects life at the lower but not quite lowest depths of that city.

It's worth seeing for the acting, which is good much of the time, and on occasion excellent. Belafonte's performance as a compulsive gambler is pleasingly cool and refined, like everything he does. I found it difficult to accept him as a loser, though. He seemed too good looking. There's a sharp rather than forlorn edge to him, and had a white actor been cast instead it would have been someone like Jack Klugman. His miscasting not withstanding, Belafonte manages to more than hold his own with his co-stars, not, I would imagine, an easy thing to do. Robert Ryan is the sociopath of the piece, and he'd perhaps been down this road once too often. In his peak years,--the late forties and early fifties--Ryan was one of the best bad men in the movies. He's still pretty good here, but a bit long in the tooth to be punching out Wayne Rogers in a bar, since he's old enough to be Rogers' father. Ryan aged badly, and his somewhat dissipated look makes him less intimidating than he ought to be. The key to his character's nastiness is his racism, which is laid on a bit heavy at times. Why this Southern redneck is living in a city where he is surrounded by the kinds of people he despises is never made clear. I wish it had been.

What saved the movie for me is Ed Begley's performance as the ex-cop who plans the robbery. Begley was one of the best American actors in the business at this time. He was for various personal reasons a late bloomer, and he didn't come into his own in films and on television until he was well into his fifties. He shows here a keen understanding of the sort of man toward whom life has been cruel, personally and professionally, and he gives a performance, smart and without a trace of self-pity, worthy of Eugene O'Neill. His work is vastly superior to the film itself, and he makes the movie worth seeing. Begley was one of a handful of actors who could singlehandedly make a film come alive, and who made too few movies worthy of him. While certain gifted actors,--John Malkovich, Tommy Lee Jones--get more than their share of opportunities to shine, Begley belongs to the group that got too few chances. I think of Sam Jaffe, Laird Cregar and James Anderson, actors whom I would like to have seen do many more films than they made. Begley makes this one worth seeing, and he singlehandedly lifts it up in quality, almost to the level of tragedy.