The Prowler (1951), like other of Losey's American films, shows the dark side of the American dream: the willingness to do anything to get the money, the car, the house, etc. Van Heflin is the cop who lost his college scholarship and is bitter about life. He kills Evelyn Keyes's husband for the money in a faked accident, letting her think it was for love, and uses the money to buy his dream business of a motel in Las Vegas, where the cars and trucks pass by on the highway just outside. When Keyes announces she is several months pregnant Van Heflin realizes that this will reveal the affair that predates the murder and they go to a ghost town to have the baby on their own, where disaster strikes when there are problems with the pregnancy.
The Prowler was the last film photographed by Arthur Miller, a distinguished cinematographer who had worked with John Ford and Fritz Lang. It is ironic that the screenplay was worked on by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, since after Losey made this film he left for Europe, with HUAC on his heels; it was less important that he was a communist than that he had worked with Bertold Brecht in the theatre. Losey's theatre experience shows in his ability to create complex shots without cuts and his ability to use space --from a luxury house to a bedsitter to a shack in a ghost town -- in a film with only two main characters. Losey's film is an unusual film noir, with its emphasis on choice rather than fate and a psychopath on the police force who appears almost normal.
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