NO WAY OUT   1950
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
108 minutes
In English

No, this is not the sexy 1987 drama with Kevin Costner. Boy, people have to start being creative again and stop using titles that have already been used!

Joseph L. Mankiewicz made a slew of movies in Hollywood, including Sleuth in 1972. This is his very early film noir and, even more importantly, this is also the cinema debut of one of the most famous actors in the history of cinema - Sidney Poitier at the tender age of 22. We can see in this electrifying flick that right off the bat Sidney Poitier was throwing himself into the thick of it... and it was a dangerous time to play a role like this, that examines volatile race relations in America. Unsurprisingly, this movie was officially banned in Chicago and unofficially banned almost everywhere in the South of the USA. It is a tight drama that is just as hard hitting today as when it was made.

Richard Widmark plays a racist son-of-a-bitch who has tried to rob a gas station with his brother. The two have been shot by the cops and have been taken into the prison hospital. Widmark's racial slurs were already bitter, but when his brother dies during an operation at the hands of a black doctor (Poitier), he explodes. He accuses the doctor of murdering his brother. One thing leads to another and at one point in the narrative the film is based on the race riots that burst out in the summer of 1943 in Detroit and Harlem. Few movies expose so brilliantly the intense racism as it existed on an everyday level. To even address this incendiary topic was certainly an unbelievably bold move in 1949. In fact, there has never been another movie like it since.

A warning: as far as our present day political sensitivity goes, all I can say is it  doesn't apply here.... the language in this film is often brutal and shocking - just as it should be - there is no point whitewashing the past.

"One of the most confrontational and incisive films about racism in America."