 |
Review
In the Alabama town of Phenix City, organized crime was
rife, controlling the alcohol, gambling, prostitution and even stretching
its insidious tentacles into the realm of the authorities and the police.
Whenever honest citizens tried to rise up against this tide of corruption,
they were beaten back down: quite literally. All this continued until
lawyer Albert Patterson (John McIntyre) and his son John (Richard Kiley)
accepted the pleas of a local group of concerned townsfolk, and Albert
agreed to stand for office as Attorney General to stamp out the vice once
and for all - but there would be great sacrifices to be made, including
innocent lives.
An earnest exposé torn from the day's headlines, The Phenix City Story was
scripted by Daniel Mainwaring and Crane Wilbur, and opens with a tacked-on
ten minutes of a documentary series of interviews with some of the key
players who took part in uncovering the crimes. Not only does this lend
credence to the tale about to unfold, it also has the effect of telling
you what's going to happen, which you would think would weaken the
suspense, but the story is so packed with sensational elements that it
serves to heighten the tension when you know that Albert Patterson will be
murdered.
The interviewees look awkward on camera, and the reporter, obviously
reading from cards, makes you anticipate a dry tone to the rest of the
film, but nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the tone
grows more wide eyed and overwrought as it continues, but its justified by
the terrible injustice of the events. The kingpin of the gangsters, Tanner
(Edward Andrews), is presented as an avuncular rogue at first, as he
enjoys the profits of fixed gambling and the company of the customers at
his bar, then he goes to meet Albert Patterson at his office to persuade
him to represent the criminals, but Patterson doesn't want to get
involved.
When his son John returns home from Germany, where he has been prosecuting
war criminals, Albert is offered a chance to run for Attorney General but
refuses. Attending a meeting of a group of citizens wishing to rid Phenix
City of the gangsters, John points out that old saying of how the way evil
triumphs is if good men do nothing, and decides to help. Up to that point,
the story has been undramatically using the characters as a mouthpiece for
law abiding views, but then a strain of surprisingly bloody violence
erupts, as John is beaten up helping his new friends, and then, in a still
shocking scene, the little girl of a black man who has assisted John is
murdered and dumped on his lawn as a warning to what could happen to
John's own kids.
This convinces Albert to run, and the couldn't-care-less, casually racist
attitude of the cops convinces you that he's doing the right thing - see
the lone policeman sauntering up to a beating without bothering to break
it up. This makes the gangsters raise the stakes, inflicting violence on
the Patterson supporters, and by election day voters are intimidated,
abused, and some men are even turned away from the polls by the promise of
sex from prostitutes! The seedy atmosphere of danger is so well conveyed
that even by the end, when the town is on its way to being cleaned up,
you're not entirely reassured.
The message is that now that the U.S.A. has sorted out the problems
abroad, it has to look to its own soil to sort out the deeply rooted
problems there, not with vigilante groups, but with the word of the law;
the result of this is martial law declared in Phenix City (were these the
same soldiers we saw in the gambling dens earlier on, I wonder?).
Enjoyable as a straight thriller, the film works because of its social
conscience, even if its belief in the power of journalism to change the
world looks naive in these days where those issues it tackles seem more
insurmountable than they did back then. Music by Harry Sukman (listen for
the sleazy "Phenix City Blues" theme sung in Tanner's club). |
