Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 31-January-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Call Northside 777 tells the true story of a man who served 11 years in jail for shooting a police officer and then was exonerated and set free. He was a Polish laborer whose arrest occurred in 1932, when Chicago's streets were especially bloody and its lawmen especially harsh towards their mortal enemies. Although he protested his innocence and was identified by only one of three witnesses, he would have languished in prison until death if his mother had not put an ad in the paper offering $5,000 to anyone who could help clear her son's name. (She scrubbed floors for 11 years to earn the money.) The Chicago Times noticed the ad and began poking around musty crime records until a reporter built up enough interest and evidence to bring the case before a state board.

If you're like me you experience an odd mix of emotions upon hearing a story like this. Happiness and relief over the person's restitution to life bump up against anger and dismay that such cruelty could result from our legal system. In recounting these events with smooth deliberation, Call Northside 777 allows the audience to experience this dichotomous reaction. The film's entry point is the reporter, P. J. McNeal (James Stewart), who is initially convinced of the guilt of inmate Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte). He forms a vague interest in the story during the first of two powerful meetings with Wiecek's mother (a winningly natural Kasia Orzazewsi) but requires urging from his editor (Lee J. Cobb) to stick with it. Not until he meets Wiecek and researches his trial does he begin to believe in his innocence. After that he runs a gauntlet of resistance from everyone involved, from friends on the police force who resent him for aiding a cop-killer, to political muck-a-mucks who disapprove of anyone questioning the authority of the law, to Wiecek himself, who is disgusted by McNeal's early articles which exploit his family to gain attention. It seems the crime and trial were messy and now nobody wants to get their hands dirty again — even with the truth and a man's life at stake.

Director Henry Hathaway's attention to detail heightens the movie's realism and generates much of its suspense. In one prolonged scene Wiecek takes a lie-detector test, and the viewer, like the man strapped to the device, finds it hard to breathe normally. Towards the end McNeal visits every dive bar in Chicago looking for a gin-slinger named Wanda Skutnik upon whom his plea for pardon revolves. This scene conveys his personal desperation and that sense of dirtiness, a manifestation of the unfortunate circumstances over which you want him to triumph. When he does, the odd mix of emotions is eminently palpable. McNeal delivers an apologetic line about how few governments would admit a mistake like unwarranted imprisonment, but that does not erase the fact that Wiecek lost much over 11 years. It is gratifying to see him walk free yet depressing to know how much effort and luck was needed for that to happen.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.