Days of the week have a certain personality to them. I think we all have our own mental images of what Saturday and Sunday feel like, and could probably imagine what they would be like if given human form. Consider Wednesday, the “hump day” everybody trudges through, and yet there is that light in the tunnel of the coming weekend. Friday is held in high regard, yet there is also the legendarily bad Black Friday which began the Great Depression. There’s Monday, which most regard as being all about lesser depressions.
But Tuesday? Who cares about Tuesday? It is almost a non-day. And yet that is the day on which convicts are routinely sent to the electric chair in 1954’s Black Tuesday.
In that prison, Edward G. Robinson and Peter Graves are to be executed. I wonder if double-header executions were really a common occurrence back then? Does it still happen today? Regardless, Robison jokes he needs Graves to be there, as you always need an opening act before the headline attraction, which he considers himself to be.
Graves was offered an easy out, though not much of one. The government will grant him a ten-day stay of execution if we will confess to where he hid the 200 grand he stole. The stubborn convict won’t settle for anything less than a full commutation of his sentence, so off he goes to the hotseat.
What he doesn’t know is Robinson’s girl (Jean Parker) has arranged to break both men out from the execution room. Reporter Jack Kelly is ambushed on his way to the prison so that one of Robinson’s thugs (Warren Stevens) can use his credentials to get into the prison under the ruse of being a member of the press. Once in the room, he will find a revolver taped under one of the chairs by a guard (James Bell), whose daughter (Sylvia Findley) is being held hostage by the gang.
That is a clever set-up, and the two prisoners escape successfully. Unfortunately, Graves is seriously wounded by a gunshot while fleeing, and so Robinson finds a place for everybody to hole up until he can at least get the dying man to tell him where the stolen loot can be found. Everything hinges on that money, as this is an expensive operation of impressive scale, with a truck to conceal a getaway car and a pilot to fly them out of the country.
That’s a lot of people waiting to get paid, though it seems more likely the entirely self-centered Robinson will instead kill each off when they have served their purpose. Then there’s the many hostages they’ve taken, adding a priest, a guard and a doctor to the already captive Findley and Kelly.
The rest of the movie plays out in a warehouse which has a truly odd assemblage of products, including toys and taxidermized animals. Coincidentally, there are also surgical tools, so that the doctor being held hostage can perform surgery on Graves. I assume the place also has boxes and boxes of ammo, as the criminals seem to have an endless supply of it in a prolonged shootout with police. I think the combined Allied forces in WWII had less combined firepower.
One would think all that shooting would be exciting, but it just becomes background noise after a while. I think that may have been the intent, as the characters start behaving as if the ricochetting bullets are no more a nuisance than mosquitos.
An obvious message of the picture is the idea that the loss of any life, even that of a convicted murderer, is tragic. I agree with that sentiment, but I still found it too pedantically, and somewhat awkwardly, conveyed here. When the priest delivers such a message, it is ham-fisted. When Graves, as somebody who has murdered before, tries to tell the same to Findley, it has a pot-kettle-black taste to it.
The film has a peculiar solemnity to it I can respect. The reporters at the prison have a long walk in silence across the complex, reinforcing the grimness of this assignment, regardless of the crimes committed by those about to lose their lives.
And the photography of that scene, and the picture overall, is fantastic. Any frame of this would serve as appropriate illustration for an encyclopedia entry on noir.
All that said, I was baffled as to why I wasn’t all that impressed by Black Tuesday, as it has excellent photography, many actors I enjoy seeing in pictures and a message about the sanctity of all life, and not just that of certain people. Something still wasn’t entirely fulfilling about the experience, and I struggle to find the words to truly communicate why that is. Perhaps it is like Tuesday in that regard, a day that is rarely memorable because it falls between the ones that tend to have strong connotations for people.
Dir: Hugo Fregonese
Starring Edward G. Robinson, Peter Graves, Jean Parker
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XVII