Odds Against Tomorrow **** (1959, Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte, Ed Begley, Shelley Winters, Gloria Grahame) – Classic Movie Review 4,993

Robert Wise’s 1959 crime thriller film noir Odds Against Tomorrow is intense and exciting, concentrating on character studies of three crooks involved in a big heist on a bank, with a strong, timely plea for tolerance in its racial sub-plot. 

Producer-director Robert Wise’s important and significant 1959 crime thriller film noir Odds Against Tomorrow is intense, violent and exciting, with a strongly conveyed, timely plea for tolerance in the racial sub-plot, concentrating on character studies of the three crooks involved in a big heist on a bank.

Ed Begley plays bent ex-cop Dave Burke, who plans a robbery, but he makes the mistake of hiring two very different debt-burdened men who share a more than uneasy relationship. One is an African American club singer, Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), who has a weakness for the horses, and the other is Earle Slater (Robert Ryan), a bigoted white psycho.

There are excellent performances all round, especially from the three main stars, but Shelley Winters as Lorry and (briefly) Gloria Grahame as Helen make their mark too. Wise’s gritty direction, the New York location filming and tough tone of Abraham Polonsky and Nelson Gidding’s screenplay have kept it seeming fresh. John Lewis’s unsettling jazz score and Joseph Brun’s atmospheric black and white cinematography make notable extra contributions to the film’s success, and its sheer class.

It is Wayne Rogers’s first film, as a soldier in bar. Also in the cast are Will Kuluva, Richard Bright, Lew Gallo, Kim Hamilton, Cicely Tyson, Zohra Lampert and Mae Barnes.

The film is produced by HarBel Productions, a company founded by Harry Belafonte, who chose Abraham Polonsky to write the script. The blacklisted screen-writer Polonsky was originally credited as John O Killens, a black novelist and friend of Belafonte, but Polonsky’s name was reinstated for the film in 1996 by the Writers Guild of America. The screenplay is based on the novel by William P McGivern.

The score is composed, arranged and conducted by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, and the soundtrack album was released on the United Artists label in 1959.

Principal photography began in March 1959. Outdoor scenes were shot in New York City and Hudson, New York. It was released on 15 October 1959 (US).

Wise recalled: ‘I wanted a certain kind of mood in some sequences. I used infra-red film. You can’t get too close on people’s faces. It does distort them but gives that wonderful quality – black skies with white clouds – and it changes the feeling and look of the scenes.’ He also uses black-and-white film in the standard aspect ratio for the last time, and followed it with the black-and-white CinemaScope films Two for the Seesaw and The Haunting.

Robert Ryan’s movie roles as cynical, prejudiced or violent characters ran opposite to his real-life beliefs and causes. He was a pacifist. an opponent of McCarthyism, a fighter for civil liberties and against racial discrimination. He often spoke about the difference between his personal beliefs and his acting roles. At a screening of Odds Against Tomorrow, he discussed ‘the problems of an actor like me playing the kind of character that in real life he finds totally despicable.’

Odds Against Tomorrow is directed by Robert Wise, runs 96 minutes, is made by HarBel Productions, is released by United Artists, is written by Abraham Polonsky and Nelson Gidding, based on the novel by William P McGivern, is shot in black and white by Joseph C Brun, is produced by Robert Wise, and is scored by John Lewis.

The cast are Harry Belafonte as Johnny Ingram, Robert Ryan as Earl Slater, Shelley Winters as Lorry, Ed Begley as David Burke, Gloria Grahame as Helen, Will Kuluva as Bacco, Kim Hamilton as Ruth, Mae Barnes as Annie, Richard Bright as Coco, Carmen De Lavallade as Kitty, Lew Gallo as Moriarty, Lois Thorne as Eadie, Wayne Rogers as soldier in bar, Zohra Lampert as girl in bar, Allen Nourse as Police Chief, and Cicely Tyson.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4,993

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