Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 22-June-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium

No Way Out (1950)

I do not remember what happens in Kevin Costner's No Way Out — whether his situation is truly helpless or he manages to extricate himself — but I can tell you that the 1950 movie of the same name deals with racism and social inequality, two problems from which there is never a simple escape. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's noirish nail-biter heaps one thorny issue on top of another until you cannot stop squirming or look away, cannot fail to realize how little things change, and cannot revile the bad guy without understanding what lies beneath his evil.

The movie opens upon Sidney Poitier in his debut as a fledgling doctor who works in a hospital ward run by his friend and mentor (Stephen McNally). A couple of brothers are brought in who were shot in the legs by police during an arrest. These men hail from the white half of the wrong side of the tracks, and one of them (Richard Widmark) is openly disgusted to see a "nigger" in authority and in charge of their treatment. The other brother shows symptoms of something more serious than a flesh wound and soon dies under Poitier's care. This sets off a series of disturbing events which would never have happened had his skin been a lighter color.

First the doctors go on the defensive offensive, with Poitier crying for an autopsy to prove that his diagnosis was right and he administered the proper treatment. His boss has a bracing conversation with the hospital's chief administrator, for whom questions of medical probity and justice pale in comparison with politics and the bottom line. Widmark vows revenge with the howling frustration of the common cur, calling on his neighborhood cronies to start a race riot and refusing an autopsy as next of kin. This leads the doctors to the deceased's ex-wife, a pivotal character well played by Linda Darnell. Through her we are forced to recognize that certain environments naturally breed bigotry and hatred along with the despair that marks her life. She grew up with Widmark and his brothers in a place where poverty, alcoholism, and physical abuse are the norm and everyone expects to be, or to be treated like, scum. Throughout the film she wavers between the low expectations on which she was raised and the yearning for something higher. To break from what you were born into is not easy … just ask the black man trying to be a doctor.

Despite the truths about humanity being mired in its own filth, Mankiewicz devises a tight thriller and manages to find a way out of what appears to be a narrow passage to a violent end. His resolution may not be entirely plausible, but it suggests that there is hope as long as individuals seek their own paths out of the darkness.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.