The Lawless
William H Pine and William C. Thomas, dubbed “The Dollar Bills,” tried to move from action films to social drama by hiring Joseph Losey to direct THE LAWLESS (1950, Criterion Channel), Daniel Mainwaring’s adaptation of his novel “The Voice of Stephen Wilder.” Working with the politically committed Losey gave them a surprisingly trenchant look at small-town bigotry, while working with them gave Losey unending headaches. They forced action scenes on him, kept his budget low and, in true Hollywood fashion, insisted the story’s social message be channeled through a love story. That it works at all is a testament to Losey’s talent and Mainwaring’s intelligent script.
Reporter Macdonald Carey gives up crusading journalism to get back to his small-town roots by buying the Santa Marta “Union.” But his idyllic memories of smelling burning leaves in the Autumn are crushed when he realizes the town is a hotbed of racism directed at the Mexican American farm workers there. When some local rich kids crash a dance party in Sleepy Hollow, the Mexican quarter, it leads to a fight in which Paul Rodriguez (Lalo Rios) accidentally slugs a police officer. Fearing for his life, he goes on the run, eventually frightening a local girl who accuses him of assault. Carey doesn’t want to get involved, but his growing romance with Sunny Garcia (Gail Russell), who runs the local Spanish-language weekly, motivates him to stand up for Paul in the face of business pressure and mob violence.
For all Losey’s efforts, the film still reflects the Hollywood approach to social relevance and racial issues. The focus often seems less on Paul’s plight than on Carey and Russell’s relationship, and Russell’s skin is darkened so she’ll fit in with the Latinx actors and local amateurs cast in supporting roles. The producers threw in a car crash that Losey would later say he hated filming (though he does it well, and, to Mainwaring’s credit, it’s precipitated by a racist police officer’s beating Rios while he’s in custody). There’s also a score that makes the whole thing sound like a romance. Oddly, the low budget offered Losey one advantage, an inconclusive ending to keep the running time and costs low. It may feel truncated, but the fact that it leaves the principal characters’ fates up in the air is preferable to tying up a complicated situation artificially.
In only his second film, Losey does a capital job of shooting the action evocatively, helped by cinematographer J. Roy Hunt. They use a moving camera for kinetic sequences like the fight at the dance hall and the hunt for Paul, while also shooting through enough deep shadows to earn the picture a reputation as a film noir and capturing some dramatically powerful deep focus scenes. The director also gets solid performances out of his B-level cast. Carey did some of his best work in his two Losey films (the other is 1963’s THE DAMNED), and here he’s strongly connected to the character and his backstory. Russell had trouble getting through a scene because of her alcoholism, but Losey not only got her through the film, but captured some beautiful reaction shots and line readings. The supporting cast includes John Hoyt, surprisingly cast as a sympathetic town leader, Lee Patrick as a sensation-mongering reporter, the lovely Argentina Brunetti as Paul’s mother, a very young Martha Hyer as a bored brunette, Frank Faylen as a lawyer and Paul Harvey as the police chief. If a broad-shouldered blond in the crowd scenes looks familiar, it’s because the film gave Tab Hunter his first credited role.
